Japanese Names for Spring Babies: Sakura, Haru and More
In Japan, spring is the season of beginnings. The school and working year start in April, just as the cherry trees bloom, and many parents look for a name that holds that feeling. Some spring names say "spring" outright. Others use a blossom, a bud or the sunlight of the season. Here are the ones in our dictionary, with what each character means.
The kanji of spring
- 春 (haru): springtime itself
- 桜 (sakura): cherry blossom
- 咲 (saki): bloom
- 芽 (me): bud, sprout
- 桃 (momo): peach
- 菫 (sumire): violet
- 陽 (haru, hi): sun, sunshine
You will find most of them on our pages of names meaning seasons and names meaning flowers.
Names that say "spring"
The sound haru means spring, and the kanji 春 shows up in names for both boys and girls.
- Haruka as 春香 is "spring fragrance". It is also written 遥 ("distant"), 悠 ("calm, eternal") and 陽花 ("sun flower"), so the spring meaning belongs to one spelling.
- Chiharu, 千春, is "a thousand springs", a wish for a long and happy life. 千晴, "a thousand clear days", is the other spelling.
- Haruki as 春樹 is "spring tree". This is the spelling used by the novelist Murakami Haruki.
- Haruto can be written 春翔, "spring" and "soar". Haruto is the most popular boys' name by sound in Meiji Yasuda's ranking, but its usual spelling, 陽翔, uses 陽 ("sun") instead.
A note on Koharu
Koharu looks like a spring name, and as 心春, "heart" and "spring", it is one. But the older spelling 小春, "little spring", has a twist. In Japanese, koharu is the old name for the mild, sunny spell in late autumn, as in the phrase koharu-biyori, an Indian-summer day. It is a lovely name, just not strictly a spring one.
Cherry blossom names
Sakura, 桜, is the cherry blossom. It is probably the best-known Japanese name outside Japan, and it has been a big name inside Japan too. In Meiji Yasuda's long-running ranking, the hiragana spelling さくら was the top girls' name for babies born in 2001 and 2010, and tied for first in 2000 and 2004. Sakura can also be written 咲良 or 咲楽, which use 咲, "bloom".
桜 is still popular as part of longer names. In the same survey's list for 2025, seven of the top 100 girls' names contained 桜. One of them is 美桜, "beautiful cherry blossom", a spelling of Mio.
Blossoms and buds
- Momoka as 桃花 is "peach blossom". Peach blossom is tied to the Girls' Day festival on 3 March, also called Momo no sekku, the peach festival.
- Sumire, 菫, is the violet, a small wildflower of early spring.
- Saki written 咲 means simply "bloom". Misaki, 美咲, is "beautiful bloom".
- Mei as 芽依 or 芽衣 uses 芽, a new bud: a quiet, hopeful image of something just beginning to grow.
- Hina can be written 雛, a chick or young bird. The same character names the hina dolls displayed for Girls' Day in early March.
Spring months as names
Japanese has old poetic names for each month. Most are not used as given names, but one spring-into-summer month is: Satsuki, 皐月, the old name for the fifth month. Satsuki is also the name of a type of azalea that blooms around then. The name can also be written 咲月, "blooming moon", which fits a spring baby even better.
Sunny spring names
Spring in Japan is also about the returning sun. 陽 ("sun") is everywhere in modern names. Himari (陽葵), Hinata (陽向) and Hina (陽菜) all use it, and so does Haruto. For more, see names meaning sun.
Pairing spring names
If you are choosing a full name, remember that the surname comes first in Japanese. Spring names sit well with nature surnames like Sakurai (桜井, "cherry-tree well"). Pairing two cherry blossoms, as in Sakurai Sakura, can feel like too much of a good thing. A contrast often works better, such as Kimura Chiharu.
Keep exploring
Browse all season names and flower names, or see every girl name and boy name in the dictionary.