necoandjeff wrote:
 > Good, so you, like many foreigners, were curious enough about 奈 that you
> took the time look it up in a kanwa jiten. Perhaps 5 minutes ago, perhaps
> one day in the past. But I've got news for you. Whatever "meaning" is
> attributed to it in a kanwajiten, it is almost exclusively used in names in
> Japanese, and it is simply phonetic. In fact, it is the genesis of the
> hiragana な. And words like 奈何 are merely relics from ancient Japanese. I
> don't doubt that the kanji had/has meaning in Chinese and that this meaning
> leaked into some old ateji words in Japanese. But to say that it has meaning
> in a name is nonsense. Go ask 100 Japanese what that kanji alone means, then
> we'll talk.
> 
> Or, perhaps you mean to suggest that the first of the thousands of women I
> referred to above was named "beautiful what child?" Does this make any sense
> to you? Do you honestly mean to suggest that her parents knew the meaning of
> 奈 and deliberately named her "beautiful what child?" Or do you think they
> named her みなこ and simply choose the kanji that they thought were most
> aesthetically appealing from among the several common ways of writing that
> name?
> 
> And does your friend also suggest that she was actually named zinc something
> (assuming she writes her name with 亜)? If that's the case, I'd love to meet
> her parents.

According to a recent survey, 亜佐美 (beautiful zinc helper) is sweeping
the nation. In second place, 香夏子 (smelly summer child).

- Kevin