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The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/MuffinBot on 2025-06-29 06:56:13+00:00.

I’m studying to take the Japan Kanji Aptitude Test (also known as the Kanken) at Level 1 sometime in the near future (yes, the ludicrously difficult even for native speakers one). There’s a section that tests “ateji”, or compound kanji words which are made up of kanji chosen for their meaning rather than their reading (most of the time). A simple example would “avalanche”, 雪崩, which is read as nadare even though neither of the kanji in this word can be read that way - but individually they mean “snow” and “collapse/crumble”, so it makes sense from a meaning perspective that snow + collapse = avalanche.

I’ve always loved ateji words because they can be a lot of fun - most of the words they test at Level 1 are obscure and boring, but some of them are amazing. Here are some of my favorites:

• 氷菓子 (アイスクリーム) - ice cream (lit. “frozen sweet”)
• 洋酒 (ジン) - gin (“Western alcohol”)
• 羊駝 (ラマ) - llama (“sheep camel”)
• 乾酪 (チーズ) - cheese (“dried dairy”)
• 海豹 (あざらし) - seal (“sea panther” lmao)
• 聖林 (ハリウッド) - Hollywood (“holy wood”)

A lot of place names are tested but you can actually sort of guess them based on the phonetic readings of the kanji a lot of the time, so they’re different from most other ateji words.

What are your favorite examples of ateji?