Practical difficulty is high because you are choosing sound, sense, kin slot, registrar list and romanisation at once.
If a consultant leads with strokes, hire a different consultant — or none.
Steps
- 1Ask whether a generation slot exists
Poem, 돌림자, or free choice.
Do not discover this after the cards.
- 2Choose the free character(s) with a dictionary, not an app
Sense as hope is fine; sense as forecast is not.
Write the intended reading.
- 3Check the legal inventory
Jinmeiyō/jōyō in Japan; local registrar rules elsewhere.
Beauty is not a defence at the counter.
- 4Fix romanisation and order
Passport, school, hyphen rules.
This is the everyday-reach problem.
- 5Say it in both languages
Home language and school language.
Two mouths, one design.
- 6Document the kin logic
One paragraph for the child later: which syllable is shared and why.
Description, not a prophecy.
Checklist
- Generation slot known — Yes / no / optional.
- Readings written — Especially Japanese.
- List-legal characters — Japan and some others.
- KOSTAT/SSA curiosity optional — Fashion only, dated.
- No stroke-count step — Hard rule.
- Romanisation locked — One Latin form.
- Sibling-set consistency — If 돌림자 is in play.
- Child-facing story drafted — Without fate claims.
Pitfalls
- Luck-shop capture — Paying for a stroke or five-element optimisation.
- Ignoring the poem — Then fighting elders you could have designed with.
- Unreadable rare characters — Even if legal, clerks and phones may fail.
- Treating Kim-plus-hanja as one clan fate — Surname concentration ≠ shared destiny.
Tools
- Jinmeiyō / jōyō lists — Japan’s legal inventory.
- Hanja dictionaries — Senses without luck overlays.
- Family generation chart — The actual spec.
- Statistics Korea tables — Fashion context, year-stamped.
The successful craft output is a string that files, reads, and marks the kin set you actually intended.