The Origami Forum

Has anybody noticed that Kamiya's last name starts with "kami"?
I just did, and so I went to a Japanese translator on the internet and put in his name.
And these are the results:

Kamiya: Paper store
Satoshi: Guidance; admonition

Seems fitting, doesn't it?

The name Kamiya is composed of two Kanji characters: Kami and Tani. These mean "God" and "Valley". It would indeed be fitting if it would mean Paper Shop, but I'm afraid it doesn't.

It looks like comments of my brother to English idioms. But in this case, we can nick him as "Papershop"...

Ah, well. I was just using a phonetic translator.
Looks like the word "kami" had only the paper related version plugged into the translator's memory. Silly translator.

AFAIK, Japanese names actually can mean their kanji native meaning, or in some cases something else with similar reading.
Like in this case, kami is both god and paper, but they use different kanji for each. Most of the kanji also have different readings depending on the context. Some kanji has special reading if used in names. It's a total mess for anyone far from Japanese language In fact, in some cases even native Japanese people don't know for sure how to read a specific name.
For example, if any of you have watched anime Death Note, the protagonist's name is Yagami Light(Raito). The kanji for his first name is actually a kanji for moon(tsuki), but in the name it takes a non-standard reading - raito.

Japanese names have always confused me. It seems that it is just as common to put their last name before the first one. For example, I have no idea what Hojyo Takashi's first name is, I always assumed it was Hojyo, but ive seen it written other ways too.

Well, Takashi is a quite common first name
Japanese always write last name before first name. The confusion is mostly due to the fact that when writing in English context, some folks tend to write them in western style, and also not everyone knows about the Japanese name order. It is actually similar to the Chinese name order - they put last name first as well.

Here is a list by Gilad Aharoni of various Japanese Origami Creators that distinguishes between surname and firstname: http://www.giladorigami.com/A_Origami_Authors.pdf