Yuma

Pinterest

Origin: Native American, Japanese

Meaning: son of the chief; serene truth/ gentleness, superiority/ distant leisurely + horse/hemp/ true, genuine

This was one of the hardest names I’ve ever tried to find any information on. It seems to be both a Native American name and a unisex Japanese name, which was where the difficulty came in. In Japan, there are three types of characters used: kanji, hiragana, and katakana. Kanji is what is used for most Japanese names. A single kanji character can stand for a whole word or concept and some names can have either 1, 2 or 3 kanji characters. Because kanji characters can have several different meanings depending on what character is used, a name can have more then one meaning, which is why I had such a hard time finding a meaning on what Yuma means. But more then just meaning, kanji names also have different pronunciations, so if you read a name written in kanji on paper, you can’t be sure how it’s pronounced; ditto on hearing it, since it can have several possible kanji characters. That’s where hiragana comes in, since it can be used to write out the syllables. Katakana is used for foreign names or words of foreign origin.

After that long explanation, now on to the name Yuma. The name yu stands for “superior, gentle” or “distant, leisurely” depending on which kanji is used. I’ve also seen another translation of the name as “serene truth”, although I’m not sure how accurate that is. The -ma was a little trickier. It could stand for either “horse”, “hemp”, or “true, genuine”. So Yuma could mean "superior, gentle or distant, leisurely + horse/ hemp" or "true, genuine", or it could mean "serene truth". I can’t say with any certainty how accurate any of those meanings are but that’s what I could manage to find online.

Yuma is also a Native American name meaning "son of the chief" 

Variants:

• Yuuma (Japanese)