Finding a Name for Your Manga

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Finding a name for a manga can at times seem complicated. But if we look at famous manga, their name generally fall into a few categories: name of the hero, name of the coveted object…

Why finding a good name for my manga?

Finding a good name for a manga is important.

The name of a manga, along with the drawing of the cover, is the first thing a reader sees. This name will therefore contribute to the appeal of your manga, as well as to the first impression a reader will have from.

The second reason for which choosing a good title is important is because the title of the manga is generally what people use to speak about your story. Make it too obscure and people won’t recall it, making it more complex for new potential readers to identify it.

The name of a manga shall therefore have something attractive and appealing for the readers, while also being easy to remember and to share with others.

How are famous manga name made?

If we have a look at the title of the most successful manga (and the same applies for movies and books), titles share some commonalities.

First, the title of a manga is generally short: 1, 2 or 3 words for the big majority.

Then, and this relates to what we have seen in the previous chapter, the name relates to the content of the story. More specifically we can see 4 types of relation:

• The name of the hero: Naruto, Doraemon…
• The objective of the hero’s journey: One Piece, Dragon Ball, the Promised Neverland…
• The occupation of the hero: Demon Slayer, Haikyu (which means volley ball in Japanese), …
• The context of the story: My Hero Academia, Assassination Classroom, Hunter X Hunter, Jujutsu Kaisen (the Japanese for Sorcery Battles)…

If you find that the result looks too basic or too close to a name already used, you can also try to combine some of these elements. Look for instance at Detective Conan, Card Captor Sakura or Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. The first ones combine the occupation of the hero with his/her name, and the second the name of the hero with the context of the story.

Finding the name of your manga

Now, to find the name of your manga, I would suggest that you start with the ideas mentioned in the previous chapter:

Find a few words that are either the name of your hero, his/her occupation, his/her objective or the context in which he/she evolves, or a combination of these.

Of course, you can also find more illustrative or poetic names. But there will sadly be no easy recipe to find these. If this is what you want but are having difficulty with, I would suggest following a process similar to the one of finding an idea for your manga.

Get an idea of the kind of title you wish for, find inspiration from other manga, books, movies…, and give time for the name to shape. Speak of it with other people, let your brain work on it… the magic word might suddenly pop out of a conversation or from one of your readings.

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See you!

Stef