Unlike women, whose names are often unknown even for those who were from the high-class families, all male characters in the story do have their proper first names. You might have been frustrated because they all sound so similar. For example, people in the Minamoto clan have first names such as Yoshitomo, Yoshikata, Yoritomo, Noriyori, Yoshitsune, Yoriie, Sanetomo, Yoshinaka (Kiso), Yoshitaka (Kiso)… they all sound so similar, indeed! The same can be said about the first names of the people from the Taira clan.

To understand why they sound so similar, one must know the common practice for the people in this era. When boys were born, they were first given the childhood name. Then, the boys in this era were usually given their proper first names when they had a “coming-of-age” ceremony to mark the end of childhood (there was no clear rule about the age of the boy for this ceremony to take place, despite the name of the ceremony). In this ceremony, people put a special hat called “eboshi” on the head of the boy, which was a symbol of the adult male. This ceremony took place under the auspices of some adults who were not the real parents of the boy, and they were called “eboshi-oya” (literally meaning, “eboshi parents”).

In this era in Japan, the male first names were usually composed of two Chinese letters. When the first name was decided at the coming-of-age ceremony, people very often took one letter from the real father, and the other from one of the eboshi-oya. In this sense, the role played by the “eboshi-oya” in Japan was very similar to the “godfather” in the Western Europe. So, for example, the name “Yoritomo” consists of two letters: the first letter “Yori” was taken from his eboshi-oya, Yorinobu Fujiwara, and the second letter “Tomo” was taken from his real father, Yoshitomo Minamoto. You can see the Chinese letters of these first names below.

Yoritomo:頼朝

Yorinobu: 頼信

Yoshitomo: 義朝

This practice means that all boys of one father usually (although not always) had one letter in common with their father, which could be either the first or the second letter (for example, as for Yoritomo’s boys, Yoriie shared “Yori” while Sanetomo shared “Tomo” with their father). This is why all names sound so similar within one family or within one clan.