Trying to figure out Japanese city names

[Skeleon]

Hey there,

I just read up on Japanese (which I'm completely illiterate in) and read about the addition of "-shi" to a city's name to denote that it is, well, a city. For instance Shinshiro-shi and Tokyo-shi. Now I'm trying to figure out how this would work if you were to construct your own city name.

Could you basically take a noun and add "-shi"? What other words would work? Adjectives? Verbs? Only proper nouns?

For instance, I googled what "gold" and "golden" means and apparently it's "kin" and "kin'iro" respectively. If I wanted to create "the golden city" (along the lines of El Dorado for instance), would that be "Kin-shi" or "Kin'iro-shi" or something else entirely? Or is it not even possible to simplistically construct a city name like that?

Thanks!

 

[Kaland]

As far as I know, it is only used on place-names to denote that it is a city, and not on nouns, adjectives etc. If you wanted to just write "(the) city of gold", then I think something like 金の都市　would suffice, while 金色の都市　would be closer to golden city. As it stands 金色　is already a name (of an onsen, though). It would however be pronounced kanairo. If you put something like 金色市　up, I'd think that it'd rather be read kanairo-shi, and people wouldn't necessarily think that it actually was a golden city, just a city named kanairo. It's rather common that characters are pronounced differently when in names. As if it wasn't enough to learn the on and kun-readings of normal words, right? -_- You can construct madeup kanji names afaik, but it would probably be written in furigana, so there would be no doubt about pronounciation.

I'm not japanese though, so I may very well be wrong! This is however my impression of how it works.
I don't worry a lot about names yet anyway. In the stuff I read , names are usually either in kana(foreign names, names that used old or complex kanji) or furigana(those that still have kanji). By the time that the furigana stops, you remember the name.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Hey there,

I just read up on Japanese (which I'm completely illiterate in) and read about the addition of "-shi" to a city's name to denote that it is, well, a city. For instance Shinshiro-shi and Tokyo-shi. Now I'm trying to figure out how this would work if you were to construct your own city name.

Could you basically take a noun and add "-shi"? What other words would work? Adjectives? Verbs? Only proper nouns?

For instance, I googled what "gold" and "golden" means and apparently it's "kin" and "kin'iro" respectively. If I wanted to create "the golden city" (along the lines of El Dorado for instance), would that be "Kin-shi" or "Kin'iro-shi" or something else entirely? Or is it not even possible to simplistically construct a city name like that?

Thanks!

Here, '-shi' is more of an honorific (if it can be applied to cities) and is applied generally only to names.

To take your example 'golden city' would be translated as 'kin'iro no machi'... *shrug*

'Kin'iro-shi' would translate more to 'Honoured Golden (colour)' but it's a bit of dubious analogous as it's one of those things that cannot be directly translated as it's context sensitive.

 

[bluepilot]

Japanese has a complex writing system whereby one character can have various readings.

Gold is 金　which can be pronounced both 'kin' and 'kane' (and a few obscure others)

City is 市　which can be pronounced as both 'shi' and 'ichi'

Now the readings are divided into the 'on' and 'kun'. When creating names the 'on' readings get paced together or the 'kun' readings get placed together. Words or names containing both 'on' and 'kun' readings are very rare.

Therefore for 'gold city', and a literal translation you could use 金市 and you could read it as either 'kinshi' or 'kaneichi'

The problems with 'kinshi' are that it sounds like　禁止　meaning 'prohibited'. Though you could use this pun to your advantage. Also the reading of 'kin' is commonly used for Korean names so this reading could be associated with Korea.

'Kaneichi' does not sound like natural Japanese though, I would propose 金町 (kanemachi) meaning 'gold town' because the reading has a better ring to it.

Some of the proposals above are quite nice too though

EDIT: You can use city 'shi' as a suffix too. So you could say 'kane-shi' for gold city too. The 'kun' reading of 'ichi' cannot be used as a suffix

 

[Skeleon]

Yikes, sure seems complicated. Thank you for the suggestions!
Man, it's time I take an actual course.

By the way, I do like the idea of a secondary pun-meaning of "prohibited". Makes a lot of sense in the context of a city of gold.