Japanese name pitch guide

A list of Japanese names with corresponding pitch. Names using the most common patter, heeban/ flatboard, are not listed.

Basics
Pitch is stress and tone used simultaneously to mark a specific word. Standard Japanese pitch uses tone rises once per word, and those moras usually have more stress. Words differ based on where the upstep is. The pitch types are:


 * Heeban/ flatboard: first mora low, others high. No stress from the pitch.
 * most common type in standard Japanese
 * Atamadaka/ head-high: first mora high, others low
 * Nakadaka/ middle-high: middle mora high, others low
 * Odaka/ tail-high: last mora high, others low

Suffixes take the preceding tone, but are never stressed. Keep in mind case particles count as suffixes in Japanese. Moras in Japanese include all short syllables; long vowels, long consonants, and syllable final -n add an extra mora. If a form has a pitch accent, then its use is unpredictable.

All Japanese dialects have words and terms with multiple acceptable pitches or irregular next to related words. Regional forms of Japanese change the output and placement of a pitch step on otherwise-identical words, with some lacking these contrasts altogether. The types are split by the number of ways words can differ only by pitch. A brief list of these variants:


 * 3-pattern type (one tone is always unstressed, other variable)
 * Standard Japanese/ Tokyo-type and the most common variant.
 * 4-pattern type (two tones can vary in stress)
 * Keihan/ Kansai-type
 * 2-pattern (one tone is always stressed, other tone is always unstressed)
 * far southern Japan, mostly in Kyuushuu
 * 1-pattern (no words distinguished by stress or tone placement alone)
 * much of southern Japan, areas just north of Tokyo, and some parts of Kansai
 * other types using combinations of the above patterns.

Marking pitch
pitch (tone and stress): marked with an acute accent (´) by default.

more common tone: typically high tone, and unmarked except with (´) for the stressed variant

less common tone: typically low tone, with (`) for the unstressed variant and (^) for the stressed variant.

Japanese dictionaries also draw the a lines over or under the stressed mora/ syllable, or use numbers counting where said mora/syllable is in a word.