Name Analysis (Kumazaki Method)
The Five Grids of Japanese Name Analysis: Heaven, Personality, Earth, Outer and Total
Japanese name analysis (seimei handan) reads fortune from the stroke count of a person's kanji name. The school most widely used in Japan today is the "Kumazaki method," systematised by Kumazaki Kenō in the early twentieth century, which splits the strokes of a surname and given name into five grids.
How the five grids are worked out
The Heaven Grid is the total stroke count of your surname. It represents fortune inherited from your family line — something beyond your own control — so it is not judged for luck on its own.
The Personality Grid adds the stroke count of the last character of your surname to the first character of your given name. It is considered the most important of the five grids, reflecting your core personality and your fortune through the middle years of life.
The Earth Grid is the total stroke count of your given name, showing your innate disposition and your fortune from childhood into young adulthood. The Outer Grid is the Heaven Grid plus the Earth Grid, minus the Personality Grid, and reflects the impression you make on others and your relationships. The Total Grid is the sum of every stroke in your full name, summing up your life as a whole.
The 1–81 numerology table
The Kumazaki method maps each grid's number onto a table running from 1 to 81 to judge its fortune. The numbers 1, 3, 5, 15, 21, 23, 24, 31, 32, 33, 41, 45, 47, 48, 52, 57, 58, 61, 63, 65, 67, 68 and 81 are considered Great Fortune, while 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 16, 17, 18, 25, 29, 35, 37, 38 and 39 are considered Fortune.
That said, a single number's fortune doesn't determine your whole life. A grid landing on a number considered unlucky simply suggests that area may need a little more conscious attention — and is generally seen as something you can compensate for once you're aware of it. Name analysis is best treated as a tool for self-understanding, not a verdict.
Stroke-counting conventions differ between schools
One point of frequent disagreement in name analysis is how strokes should be counted. The original Kumazaki method uses the older, traditional (Kangxi Dictionary) forms of characters, and counts simplified radicals by the stroke count of the character they stand in for — for example the three-dot water radical (氵) is counted as 4 strokes (as 水), the grass radical (艹) as 6 strokes (as 艸), and the movement radical (辶) as 7 strokes (as 辵).
Other schools simply use the modern, standard stroke count instead, so the same name can produce a different result depending on which school calculated it. Since there's no settled consensus on which approach is "correct," it's entirely normal to see different results across different sites.
How this site calculates it
This site holds an internal dictionary of roughly 1,500 kanji, hiragana and katakana characters commonly used in names, and counts strokes using the modern, standard forms. Following Kumazaki convention, however, the kanji numerals one through ten are counted by the stroke count of their numeric meaning (一 = 1 stroke, 十 = 10 strokes) rather than their literal shape.
For rare characters not in the dictionary, a deterministic fallback estimates a stroke count from the character's Unicode code point. This estimate is only approximate, so treat any result built on it as a rough reference rather than an exact figure.
The lucky colour is drawn from the element associated with the Total Grid's number, the lucky item from the Personality Grid's number, and the lucky direction from the Outer Grid's number.
* This article introduces the ideas behind this divination tradition and makes no claim to scientific validity. Please enjoy your reading as entertainment.