Quote:
Originally Posted by kuroisaiyajin
I almost freaked the first time a Japanese friend of mine couldn't read a couple kanji, just to find out there were maybe hundreds more he didn't know. Made me feel a lot better knowing that I didn't have to learn everything in the dictionary. I hear there are around 4,000 commonly used kanji, and about 2,000 of those were mainly used for names. Any truth to that?
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Depends on what you mean by "names". Kanji names for people and places are read differently than if they are read for nouns, verbs, etc.
For example, 本 is usually read as ほん when talking about books,
but read as もと when it is is someone's name. For example 橋本 is read はしもと.
The line between what is "commonly used" and "not-commonly used" is probably several hundred, if not more, kanji wide. The 2000-3000 kanji required to read a newspaper also include names, and kanji used in names are also used in other readings. What I mean is there is no distinction between "name kanji" and "non-name kanji". If there were, people's names wouldn't have meaning.