Japanese Names That Mean Ghost: Words and Character Names

Short answer

• There is no common Japanese given name that translates directly as ghost, and understanding why is the key to this topic. The usual Japanese word for a ghost is yurei (幽霊), the spirit of a dead person. Yurei is a common noun, a word for a kind of being. It is not a name parents give a child, and no standard given name in everyday use in Japan carries ghost as its meaning. What does exist is three honest things. First, the vocabulary: yurei and the family of spirit words built on the kanji rei (霊), set apart from obake and yokai, which are wider and often mistranslated terms. Second, the folklore: the kinds of yurei, what a yurei traditionally looks like, and the famous named ghosts, such as Oiwa and Okiku, whose ordinary human names are part of why their stories endure. Third, character names: words and name elements, each with its kanji and real meaning, that writers can use truthfully for a ghost character, labeled as fiction naming rather than presented as established baby names. One spelling note. Careful romanization writes these words with long vowels: yuurei, youkai and onryou. This article uses the shorter everyday spellings yurei, yokai and onryo, the forms most readers search for, but the long vowels are really there in the Japanese.

How Japanese Name Meanings Work

A Japanese given name has a sound and a written form, and the meaning lives in the written form. The same sound can be written with many different kanji, and each spelling carries a different meaning. The sound rei, for example, can be written with characters meaning spirit, zero, command, courtesy or the clear tinkling sound of jade, among others. A list that gives a romanized name with no kanji has given you nothing you can check.

That is why ghost is such a difficult meaning to claim honestly. For a name to mean ghost, one of its kanji would have to be a ghost character, and the obvious candidate is rei (霊), soul, spirit, departed soul, ghost. In practice, parents in Japan do not choose that character for a child’s registered name. Its associations are with the dead, with memorial rites and with haunted places, and name dictionaries show the sound rei written with gentler characters instead. The meaning itself sits outside what Japanese naming normally does, because names are wishes for a living child.

Fiction works by different rules, as long as the difference is stated. A novelist or game designer can give a spirit character a name built from shadow, darkness or pale color words, or use a spirit word itself as a title inside the story. What no one should do is present that invented character name as an established Japanese baby name. This article keeps the two categories separate throughout.

Readers who enjoy the language side of naming may also like our guides to the hardest languages to learn and the easiest language to learn, and our overview of how many languages are in the world.

The Japanese Words for Ghost

Yurei: the ghost of a dead person

Yurei (幽霊) is the standard word for a ghost: a ghost, specter or apparition, specifically the spirit of a person who has died. The word has two kanji. The first, yu (幽), means faint, dim or secluded. The second, rei (霊), means soul or spirit. Put together, the word pictures a dim spirit, something barely there, which matches the traditional image of a pale figure fading at the edges.

In traditional belief, every person has a soul, called a reikon (霊魂). When funeral and memorial rites are completed properly, the soul is thought to settle and join the ancestors. A yurei is what results when that settling does not happen: a sudden or violent death, missing rites, or an overpowering emotion such as grief, love, jealousy or a wish for revenge holds the spirit in the world of the living, until the missing rite is performed or the feeling that binds it is resolved. That structure explains why Japanese ghost stories so often mix fear with pity. The ghost is frightening, but it is also stuck.

The rei family: the other spirit words

Most Japanese words for types of ghost are compounds ending in the same kanji, rei (霊), read rei in some compounds and ryo in others. Jisho gives the kanji itself the meanings soul, spirit, departed soul and ghost, and the compounds divide that idea by how the person died and what the spirit does now:

• Onryo (怨霊) combines grudge with spirit and means a vengeful ghost, a spirit that returns to punish the people who wronged it. This is the most feared kind of yurei and the engine of Japan’s most famous ghost stories.
• Goryo (御霊) adds an honorific prefix to the same character. In its narrow sense it names the spirit of a noble or notable person who died unjustly or in a disaster, was feared as a bringer of calamity, and was then enshrined as a kami, a deity, to pacify it. A dangerous ghost could be honored into becoming a guardian.
• Borei (亡霊) combines departed with spirit. It is the literary word for a ghost, the departed spirit, and translators often reach for it in Gothic contexts.
• Shiryo (死霊) combines dead with spirit and means the spirit of a dead person, stated bluntly.
• Ikiryo (生霊) combines living with spirit, the strange exception in the family: the spirit of a living person, projected outward by intense emotion while the person still lives. It appears in classical literature, most famously in The Tale of Genji.
• The same character also appears in compounds such as shinrei (心霊), spirit or psychic phenomena, and eirei (英霊), the honored spirits of the war dead. None of these compounds is a personal name. They are vocabulary, listed here so a reader who meets one in a story, a game or a shrine visit can place it correctly.

Obake and bakemono: the thing that changed

Obake (お化け) and bakemono (化け物) are often translated as ghost, and that translation misleads. The Jisho entry for obake, drawing on the standard reference summary, explains that obake and bakemono are a class of yokai, and that the terms literally mean a thing that changes, referring to transformation or shapeshifting. The verb at the root is bakeru (化ける), to transform or take another form. These words primarily describe living things or supernatural beings that have taken a temporary transformed shape, and they are distinct from the spirits of the dead. A transformed fox, a cat that has become a bakeneko, or an old household object that has gained a spirit can all be called obake or bakemono. None of them is the ghost of a dead person.

In casual speech, obake is sometimes used loosely for a ghost, and the haunted house attraction at a fair is an obake yashiki. That secondary use is why the words get conflated online. For naming and accurate writing, keep the primary distinction: obake is about change of form, yurei is about a dead person’s spirit.

Yokai: the wide category, not a synonym for ghost

Yokai (妖怪) is the widest term in this article. It covers the whole world of Japanese supernatural beings and strange phenomena: animal spirits, household beings, mountain and river creatures, animated objects, ogre like figures such as oni, and many beings that were never human and never died. Some yokai are frightening, some are comic, and some are simply strange. A kappa in a river and a tengu in the mountains are yokai. Neither is a ghost.

The naming rule follows directly. If your character was once a living person and has returned after death, the accurate frame is yurei, or a specific rei compound. If your character is a creature, a transformed animal or an animated object, the accurate frame is yokai, obake or bakemono. Swapping those labels is the most common accuracy mistake in English language writing on this topic, and it is easy to avoid once the words are separated.

Types of Yurei in Folklore

Storytellers also sort yurei by what holds them in the world, and a few types recur as stock figures:

• The onryo, already described, is the vengeful ghost, classically a wronged woman whose grievance gives her terrible power. Oiwa, discussed below, is the defining example.
• The ubume is the ghost of a woman who died in childbirth or leaving a small child behind. She lingers out of care rather than hatred, still trying to look after her baby. An ubume story is sad before it is frightening.
• The funayurei are ghosts at sea, the spirits of people who drowned, said to haunt boats and the waters where they died.
• The shugorei is a protective spirit, a guardian ghost, the gentle opposite of the onryo, and a useful corrective to the idea that every yurei is hostile. Some remain, in the stories, because they are still watching over someone.

The system classifies ghosts by emotion and circumstance, not by appearance. A writer gets more from choosing the binding emotion first, sorrow, grievance, love, duty, than from choosing a frightening word first.

What a Yurei Looks Like, and the Famous Named Ghosts

The classic yurei has a settled visual form, fixed in the Edo period by painters, print makers and kabuki theater, and still recognized in Japan today. The ghost wears white, the white burial kimono, called a katabira or, when inscribed with sutras, a kyokatabira, used in Edo period funeral rites. White is also a color of ritual purity in Shinto, traditionally reserved for priests and the dead. The hair is long, black and loose, because hair that was pinned up in life was let down for burial. The hands dangle limply from the wrists, held out in front. Most distinctively, the figure typically has no legs or feet and fades away below the waist, floating rather than walking. That footless form is associated above all with the painter Maruyama Okyo and his painting The Ghost of Oyuki in the late 1700s, and it spread from ukiyo-e prints into kabuki and modern horror. A small triangular white cloth, called a hitaikakushi or tenkan, sometimes appears on the forehead, and floating flames, hitodama, literally human souls, often accompany the figure.

None of this resembles the Western bedsheet ghost. A sheet with eye holes is a Halloween trope from a different tradition. A yurei is a person in burial dress, and the horror comes from recognition: this was someone, dressed for her own funeral.

The famous ghosts prove the naming point of this article. Japan’s three great ghost stories, the Nihon Sandai Kaidan, center on Otsuyu, of Botan Doro, The Peony Lantern; Okiku, of Banshu Sarayashiki, the servant girl of the broken plate story, who counts plates in the retelling; and Oiwa, of Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan, first staged as a kabuki play by Tsuruya Nanboku IV in 1825. Oiwa, betrayed by her husband Iemon, returns as an onryo of extraordinary persistence, and her image shaped much of what followed, including modern Japanese horror cinema. Every one of these ghosts carries an ordinary woman’s name of her period, with the respectful prefix o. Nobody named them with a word meaning ghost, and the stories are stronger for it, because the name insists the ghost was a person first. Our companion guide to Japanese names that mean protector shows the same principle from the other direction: there, a human guardian keeps a human name built on protector kanji, just as here a human ghost keeps a human name.

Ghost stories themselves are called kaidan, strange tales, and they are traditionally a summer pleasure in Japan, told for the chill they bring in hot weather. The game Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai, in which a hundred tales were told as candles were extinguished one by one, became popular in the late 17th century, and the Obon season, when ancestors are honored and welcomed, gives ghost telling its natural place in the calendar.

Is There a Japanese Given Name That Means Ghost?

No, not as an established name in ordinary use. This section explains the closest cases honestly, because they are the ones name lists online tend to blur.

Rei is the name readers most often ask about. The sound rei is a genuine and popular given name for girls and boys, and name dictionaries list dozens of spellings for it. The common spellings include the character for the clear tinkling of jade (玲), the character for courtesy (礼), the character for cleverness (怜), the character for zero (零), and the character for command (令), the first character of the era name Reiwa. The ghost spelling, rei written 霊, soul, spirit, departed soul, ghost, is the spelling name dictionaries do not present as a normal choice for a child. So the accurate statement is narrow: the sound rei can be written with a character that means spirit or ghost, and in fiction a writer may choose that spelling deliberately for a spirit character. The inaccurate statement is the broad one, that Rei is a Japanese name meaning ghost. As actually used in Japan, Rei means whatever its actual kanji say, and those kanji are almost never the ghost character.

Yurei itself is not a given name. It appears as a title, a work name, a username and a spirit name inside fiction, all legitimate creative uses. It does not appear as an ordinary registered personal name. The same caution applies to the whole rei family: onryo, borei, shiryo and goryo are common nouns and, for goryo, a religious term. None is a personal name. A story may title its antagonist the Onryo of a given place, which is good atmospheric writing, not evidence of a name tradition.

Character Names and Name Elements, With Their Real Meanings

The eight entries below are the source list for this topic, kept complete, corrected where needed, and relabeled honestly. None of them means ghost. Each is either a word a writer can use as a spirit name or title inside fiction, or a genuine name or name element whose real meaning suits a ghost character’s mood.

1. Yurei (幽霊), ghost, specter, apparition. Category: word, not a given name. Use it as a story title or the in-world designation of a spirit. Do not list it as a personal name.
2. Kage (影), shadow, silhouette, reflection, a figure glimpsed at a distance. Category: word and fiction name element. A shadow is present but insubstantial, which is why Kage works quietly well for a spirit in fiction. A second character also read kage, (陰), means shade, the cool shadowed side of a thing, and the hidden or yin side. The two are not interchangeable: the first is the shadow a body casts, the second is the shade it stands in. Neither is an established given name on its own.
3. Yami (闇), darkness. Category: word and fiction name element. Yami is the general word for darkness, literal and figurative, and kurayami (暗闇) means complete darkness. A night bound spirit can carry Yami as an in-fiction name or epithet. It is not a standard given name.
4. Shiro (白), white; also shiro (城), castle. Category: genuine word pair, usable as a fiction name element. The white reading is the one that suits this topic: white is the color of the burial kimono, of mourning and of ritual purity for the dead, so a pale spirit called Shiro in a story reads as ghostly for a culturally real reason. As a real world given name, Shiro is more often met inside longer names than standing alone, so standalone Shiro is best treated as a character name.
5. Rei (霊), soul, spirit, departed soul, ghost; the same sound written 零 means zero and written 令 means command. Category: genuine given name sound, ghost spelling reserved for fiction. For a living character in a realistic story, choose one of the ordinary Rei spellings. For a spirit character, the 霊 spelling is a deliberate authorial signal.
6. Hisui (翡翠), jade, specifically green jadeite; the same characters also name the kingfisher. Category: genuine word, atmosphere only, and corrected here. The source list placed Hisui among names for boys and men and called it a cold, pale name. Jade is a prized green stone, hisui-iro is jade green as a color name, and Hisui as a modern given name is used more often for girls than for boys. It has no ghost meaning at all, and it should never be presented as a ghost name or as a characteristically male name.
7. Akira, bright or clear, commonly written with characters such as (明) or (昭). Category: genuine given name, counterweight only. Akira is a well established unisex given name. Its brightness can be a deliberate contrast in a ghost story, for a guardian spirit, a shugorei, or a living character who sees ghosts. It is not a ghost name.
8. Sora (空), sky. Category: genuine given name, atmosphere only. The image of a drifting spirit who cannot rest in one place is a writer’s association, not a meaning. Sky suggests openness and distance, which can suit a wandering spirit character, but Sora means sky, and nothing more.

Two further elements are often more useful than any of the eight. Genei (幻影) means a phantom, an illusion or a vision. Hitodama (人魂), literally human soul, names the floating flames that accompany a yurei, and works well as a motif word rather than as a person’s name.

For a female or male ghost character, the tradition’s own answer is the strongest one: give the character the ordinary name they would have had in life, and add, if the story needs it, a title built from this article’s vocabulary, such as the Onryo of a named place. The human name carries the pity. The title carries the fear. The classic stories split the work exactly that way.

How to Choose a Ghost Name for a Story or Game

Start by deciding what kind of being you are naming. A dead person’s spirit belongs in the yurei frame. A transformed creature or animated object belongs in the yokai and obake frame. That single decision prevents most accuracy errors.

Next, decide the binding emotion. Grievance points toward onryo language and a harsher title. Grief or unfinished care points toward an ordinary human name with no frightening title at all, because the story’s power will come from recognition and pity. A protective presence pairs naturally with the naming logic in our Japanese names that mean protector guide.

Then choose the name form. For a human ghost, a plausible human given name of the right period, checked against a name dictionary so its kanji say something true, will almost always beat a vocabulary word worn as a name. Reserve Yurei, Kage, Yami and Genei for titles, epithets and spirits who were never human. If you use the rei (霊) spelling for a character called Rei, do it knowingly: Japanese readers will read it as a deliberate ghost signal.

Finally, check the characters before you commit, especially if the name will appear in artwork or a cover. Confirm each kanji and its reading in a dictionary. A romanized name with no kanji cannot be checked at all.

What These Words Do Not Mean

Yokai does not mean ghost; it is the wide category of supernatural beings and phenomena. Oni does not mean ghost; an oni is an ogre like being of folklore, not a dead person’s spirit. Obake does not primarily mean ghost; it means a thing that has changed form, with a loose secondary use for ghosts in casual speech. Rei does not automatically mean ghost; only the character 霊 carries the spirit sense. And no entry in this article, however atmospheric, turns a word for shadow, darkness, jade, brightness or sky into a name meaning ghost. The meanings stay what the dictionaries say they are.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Japanese word for ghost?

Yurei (幽霊). It means a ghost, specter or apparition, specifically the spirit of a dead person. Careful romanization writes it yuurei, because the first vowel is long.

What is the difference between yurei and yokai?

A yurei is the ghost of a dead person. Yokai is the much wider category of supernatural beings and phenomena in Japanese folklore, including animal spirits, animated objects and creatures such as kappa and tengu, many of which were never human and never died. Most yokai are not ghosts.

What is the difference between yurei and obake?

A yurei is a dead person’s spirit. Obake, like bakemono, literally means a thing that changes, and it primarily describes a being that has transformed or shapeshifted, such as a fox or cat in another form, or an object that has gained a spirit. In casual speech obake is sometimes used loosely for a ghost, which is where the confusion starts.

Is there a Japanese name that means ghost?

No established given name in ordinary use in Japan means ghost. The sound rei can be written with the character 霊, which means soul, spirit, departed soul and ghost, but that spelling is not a normal choice for a child’s name, and Rei as actually used is written with other characters meaning such things as courtesy, zero, command or the sound of jade. Lists that present Rei, Yurei or Onryo as baby names meaning ghost are presenting words and fiction uses as if they were name traditions.

What does onryo mean?

Onryo (怨霊) means a vengeful ghost: the spirit of a person who died with a powerful grievance and returns to punish those responsible. Oiwa, of Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan, is the most famous example.

What does rei mean in Japanese?

The kanji rei (霊) means soul, spirit, departed soul and ghost, and it appears in compounds such as yurei, onryo and shinrei. As a spoken sound, rei is shared by many unrelated words and name spellings, including characters meaning zero, command and courtesy, so the meaning of any name pronounced Rei depends entirely on its kanji.

Why do Japanese ghosts have no feet?

In the traditional image fixed during the Edo period, a yurei fades away below the waist and has no legs or feet, floating instead of walking. The form is associated with the painter Maruyama Okyo and his painting The Ghost of Oyuki, and it spread through ukiyo-e prints and kabuki theater into the modern image. The footless form marks the ghost as no longer fully part of the physical world.

What do Japanese ghosts wear?

A white burial kimono, called a katabira or kyokatabira, of the kind used in Edo period funeral rites, with long loose black hair that was let down for burial. A triangular white cloth is sometimes shown on the forehead, and floating flames called hitodama often appear nearby. The white sheet ghost of Western Halloween is a different tradition.

Can I use Yurei, Kage or Yami as a character name?

Yes, as fiction naming, with the meanings stated honestly. Yurei works best as a title or designation of a spirit rather than as a personal name. Kage means shadow and Yami means darkness, and both work as in-fiction spirit names or epithets. None of the three is an established given name in everyday use, so present them as character names, not as baby names.

What are good Japanese ghost names for a female character?

The tradition’s own answer is an ordinary woman’s name from the character’s period, because the famous ghosts, Oiwa, Okiku and Otsuyu, all carry everyday names, and the familiarity is what makes them moving as well as frightening. If the story needs a supernatural signal, add it as a title or epithet rather than replacing the human name with a word meaning ghost.

Sources & references

• Jisho.org, Japanese Dictionary, entry for obake (お化け), including the reference summary of obake and bakemono as a class of yokai meaning a thing that changes. https://jisho.org/word/%E3%81%8A%E5%8C%96%E3%81%91?color_theme=light
• Jisho.org, Japanese Dictionary, kanji entry for rei (霊): soul, spirit, departed soul, ghost; compounds including onryo (revengeful ghost) and shinrei (spirit, ghost). Accessed via Jisho search results for the rei kanji, 3 Nov 2026.
• Zack Davisson, Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai, Japanese Words for Ghost: yurei, borei, shiryo, ikiryo, onryo and the rei compounds. http://hyakumonogatari.com/2011/07/
• Wikipedia, Yurei: name and kanji, white burial kimono, black hair, hands and feet, hitodama, and the Edo period image. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Y%C5%ABrei&printable=yes
• Wikipedia, Goryo: honorific spirit, onryo, enshrinement as kami, and the go and ryo kanji. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/goryo
• Wikipedia, Bakemono (Obake): a thing that changes, transformation, and the distinction from the spirits of the dead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakemono
• Sotheby's, Japan's Three Great Ghost Stories: Otsuyu, Okiku and Oiwa, the onryo, and the Nihon Sandai Kaidan. https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/japans-three-great-ghost-stories?_amp=true
• Japanese-names.info, Rei (girls) and Rei (boys): the common kanji writings for the name Rei and their meanings, including zero, command, courtesy and the jade tinkling character. https://japanese-names.info/first-name/rei-2/ and https://japanese-names.info/first-name/rei/
• Japanese Rituals, Yurei, the Ghosts of Japanese Folklore: the dim spirit etymology, the white robe, hitodama, onryo and ubume. https://japaneserituals.com/yurei/
• Japanese Rituals, Shadow in Japanese: kage written as shadow cast and as shade, and the contrast with yami, darkness. Accessed via search results, 3 Nov 2026.
• Fluent in 3 Months, How to Say Ghost in Japanese: yurei as the closest everyday word, the rei compounds, yokai, oni, bakemono, obake and kaidan. https://www.fluentin3months.com/ghost-in-japanese/