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Kanji

Kanji (漢字) are the logographic Chinese characters adapted from the Chinese script used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequently-derived syllabic scripts of hiragana and katakana. The characters have Japanese pronunciations; most have two, with one based on the Chinese sound. A few characters were invented in Japan by constructing character components derived from other Chinese characters. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan made its own efforts to simplify the characters, now known as shinjitai, by a process similar to China's simplification efforts, with the intention to increase literacy among the common folk. Since the 1920s, the Japanese government has published character lists periodically to help direct the education of its citizenry through the myriad Chinese characters that exist. There are nearly 3,000 kanji used in Japanese names and in common communication.

The term kanji in Japanese literally means "Han characters". It is written in Japanese by using the same characters as in traditional Chinese, and both refer to the character writing system known in Chinese as hanzi. The significant use of Chinese characters in Japan first began to take hold around the 5th century AD and has since had a profound influence in shaping Japanese culture, language, literature, history, and records. Inkstone artifacts at archaeological sites dating back to the earlier Yayoi period were also found to contain Chinese characters.

Although some characters, as used in Japanese and Chinese, have similar meanings and pronunciations, others have meanings or pronunciations that are unique to one language or the other. For example, means 'honest' in both languages but is pronounced makoto or sei in Japanese, and chéng in Standard Mandarin Chinese. Individual kanji characters and multi-kanji words invented in Japan from Chinese morphemes have been borrowed into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese in recent times. These are known as Wasei-kango, or Japanese-made Chinese words. For example, the word for telephone, denwa in Japanese, was derived from the Chinese words for "electric" and "conversation." It was then calqued as diànhuà in Mandarin Chinese, điện thoại in Vietnamese and 전화 jeonhwa in Korean.

History
Chinese characters first came to Japan on official seals, letters, swords, coins, mirrors, and other decorative items imported from China. The earliest known instance of such an import was the King of Na gold seal given by Emperor Guangwu of Han to a Wa emissary in 57 AD. Chinese coins as well as inkstones from the first century AD have also been found in Yayoi period archaeological sites. However, the Japanese people of that era probably had little to no comprehension of the script, and they would remain relatively illiterate until the fifth century AD, when writing in Japan became more widespread. According to the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki, a semi-legendary scholar called Wani was dispatched to Japan by the (Korean) Kingdom of Baekje during the reign of Emperor Ōjin in the early fifth century, bringing with him knowledge of Confucianism and Chinese characters.

The earliest Japanese documents were probably written by bilingual Chinese or Korean officials employed at the Yamato court. For example, the diplomatic correspondence from King Bu of Wa to Emperor Shun of Liu Song in 478 AD has been praised for its skillful use of allusion. Later, groups of people called fuhito were organized under the monarch to read and write Classical Chinese. During the reign of Empress Suiko (593–628), the Yamato court began sending full-scale diplomatic missions to China, which resulted in a large increase in Chinese literacy at the Japanese court.

In ancient times, paper was so rare that people wrote kanji onto thin, rectangular strips of wood, called mokkan. These wooden boards were used for communication between government offices, tags for goods transported between various countries, and the practice of writing. The oldest written kanji in Japan discovered so far were written in ink on wood as a wooden strip dated to the 7th century, a record of trading for cloth and salt.

The Japanese language had no written form at the time Chinese characters were introduced, and texts were written and read only in Chinese. Later, during the Heian period (794–1185), a system known as kanbun emerged, which involved using Chinese text with diacritical marks to allow Japanese speakers to read Chinese sentences and restructure them into Japanese on the fly, by changing word order and adding particles and verb endings, in accordance with the rules of Japanese grammar. This was essentially a kind of codified sight translation.

Chinese characters also came to be used to write texts in the vernacular Japanese language, resulting in the modern kana syllabaries. Around 650 AD, a writing system called man'yōgana (used in the ancient poetry anthology Man'yōshū) evolved that used a number of Chinese characters for their sound, rather than for their meaning. Man'yōgana written in cursive style evolved into hiragana (literally "fluttering kana" in reference to the motion of the brush during cursive writing), or onna-de, that is, "ladies' hand", a writing system that was accessible to women (who were denied higher education). Major works of Heian-era literature by women were written in hiragana. Katakana (literally "partial kana", in reference to the practice of using a part of a kanji character) emerged via a parallel path: monastery students simplified man'yōgana to a single constituent element. Thus the two other writing systems, hiragana and katakana, referred to collectively as kana, are descended from kanji. In contrast with kana (, literally "borrowed name", in reference to the character being "borrowed" as a label for its sound), kanji are also called mana (, literally "true name", in reference to the character being used as a label for its meaning).

In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write certain words or parts of words (usually content words such as nouns, adjective stems, and verb stems), while hiragana are used to write inflected verb and adjective endings, phonetic complements to disambiguate readings (okurigana), particles, and miscellaneous words which have no kanji or whose kanji are considered obscure or too difficult to read or remember. Katakana are mostly used for representing onomatopoeia, non-Japanese loanwords (except those borrowed from ancient Chinese), the names of plants and animals (with exceptions), and for emphasis on certain words.

Orthographic reform and lists of kanji
Since ancient times, there has been a strong opinion in Japan that kanji is the orthodox form of writing, but there were also people who argued against it. Kamo no Mabuchi, a scholar of the Edo period, criticized the large number of characters in kanji. He also appreciated the small number of characters in kana characters and argued for the limitation of kanji.

After the Meiji Restoration and as Japan entered an era of active exchange with foreign countries, the need for script reform in Japan began to be called for. Some scholars argued for the abolition of kanji and the writing of Japanese using only kana or Latin characters. However, these views were not so widespread.

However, the need to limit the number of kanji characters was understood, and in May 1923, the Japanese government announced 1,962 kanji characters for regular use. In 1940, the Japanese Army decided on the "Table of Restricted Kanji for Weapons Names" (兵器名称用制限漢字表) which limited the number of kanji that could be used for weapons names to 1,235. In 1942, the National Language Council announced the "Standard Kanji Table" (標準漢字表) with a total of 2,528 characters, showing the standard for kanji used by ministries and agencies and in general society.

In 1946, after World War II and under the Allied Occupation of Japan, the Japanese government, guided by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, instituted a series of orthographic reforms, to help children learn and to simplify kanji use in literature and periodicals.

The number of characters in circulation was reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established. Some characters were given simplified glyphs, called shinjitai (新字体). Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged.

These are simply guidelines, so many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used; these are known as hyōgaiji (表外字).

Kyōiku kanji
The kyōiku kanji (教育漢字) are the 1,026 first kanji characters that Japanese children learn in elementary school, from first grade to sixth grade. The grade-level breakdown is known as the gakunen-betsu kanji haitōhyō (学年別漢字配当表), or the gakushū kanji (学習漢字). This list of kanji is maintained by the Japanese Ministry of Education and prescribes which kanji characters and which kanji readings students should learn for each grade.

Jōyō kanji
The jōyō kanji (常用漢字) are 2,136 characters consisting of all the kyōiku kanji, plus 1,110 additional kanji taught in junior high and high school. In publishing, characters outside this category are often given furigana. The jōyō kanji were introduced in 1981, replacing an older list of 1,850 characters known as the tōyō kanji (当用漢字), introduced in 1946. Originally numbering 1,945 characters, the jōyō kanji list was expanded to 2,136 in 2010. Some of the new characters were previously jinmeiyō kanji; some are used to write prefecture names: 阪, 熊, 奈, 岡, 鹿, 梨, 阜, 埼, 茨, 栃 and 媛.

Jinmeiyō kanji
As of September 25, 2017, the jinmeiyō kanji (人名用漢字) consists of 863 characters. Kanji on this list are mostly used in people's names and some are traditional variants of jōyō kanji. There were only 92 kanji in the original list published in 1952, but new additions have been made frequently. Sometimes the term jinmeiyō kanji refers to all 2,999 kanji from both the jōyō and jinmeiyō lists combined.

Hyōgai kanji
Hyōgai kanji (表外漢字) are any kanji not contained in the jōyō kanji and jinmeiyō kanji lists. These are generally written using traditional characters, but extended shinjitai forms exist.

Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji
The Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji and kana define character code-points for each kanji and kana, as well as other forms of writing such as the Latin alphabet, Cyrillic script, Greek alphabet, Arabic numerals, etc. for use in information processing. They have had numerous revisions. The current standards are:
 * JIS X 0208, the most recent version of the main standard. It has 6,355 kanji.
 * JIS X 0212, a supplementary standard containing a further 5,801 kanji. This standard is rarely used, mainly because the common Shift JIS encoding system could not use it. This standard is effectively obsolete.
 * JIS X 0213, a further revision which extended the JIS X 0208 set with 3,695 additional kanji, of which 2,743 (all but 952) were in JIS X 0212. The standard is in part designed to be compatible with Shift JIS encoding.
 * JIS X 0221:1995, the Japanese version of the ISO 10646/Unicode standard.

Gaiji
Gaiji (外字) are kanji that are not represented in existing Japanese encoding systems. These include variant forms of common kanji that need to be represented alongside the more conventional glyph in reference works and can include non-kanji symbols as well.

Gaiji can be either user-defined characters, system-specific characters or third-party add-on products. Both are a problem for information interchange, as the code point used to represent an external character will not be consistent from one computer or operating system to another.

Gaiji were nominally prohibited in JIS X 0208-1997 where the available number of code-points was reduced to only 940. JIS X 0213-2000 used the entire range of code-points previously allocated to gaiji, making them completely unusable. Most desktop and mobile systems have moved to Unicode negating the need for gaiji for most users. Nevertheless, they persist today in Japan's three major mobile phone information portals, where they are used for emoji (pictorial characters).

Unicode allows for optional encoding of gaiji in private use areas, while Adobe's SING (Smart INdependent Glyphlets) technology allows the creation of customized gaiji.

The Text Encoding Initiative uses a $⟨g⟩$ element to encode any non-standard character or glyph, including gaiji. (The g stands for gaiji.)

Total number of kanji
There is no definitive count of kanji characters, just as there is none of Chinese characters generally. The Dai Kan-Wa Jiten, which is considered to be comprehensive in Japan, contains about 50,000 characters. The Zhonghua Zihai, published in 1994 in China, contains about 85,000 characters, but the majority of them are not in common use in any country, and many are obscure variants or archaic forms.

A list of 2,136 jōyō kanji is regarded as necessary for functional literacy in Japanese. Approximately a thousand more characters are commonly used and readily understood by the majority in Japan and a few thousand more find occasional use, particularly in specialized fields of study but those may be obscure to most out of context. A total of 13,108 characters can be encoded in various Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji.

Readings
Individual kanji may be used to write one or more different words or morphemes, leading to different pronunciations or "readings." The correct reading is determined by contextual cues (such as whether the character represents part of a compound word versus an independent word), the exact intended meaning of the word, and its position within the sentence. For example, 今日 is mostly read kyō, meaning "today", but in formal writing it is instead read konnichi, meaning "nowadays", which is understood from context. Furigana is used to specify ambiguous readings, such as rare, literary, or otherwise non-standard readings. This ambiguity may arise due to more than one reading becoming activated in the brain.

Kanji readings are categorized as either on'yomi (音読み), from Chinese, or kun'yomi (訓読み), native Japanese, and most characters have at least two readings—at least one of each.

However, some characters have only a single reading, such as kiku (菊) or iwashi (鰯); kun-only are common for Japanese-coined kanji (kokuji).

Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings; the most complex common example is 生, which is read as sei, shō, nama, ki, o-u, i-kiru, i-kasu, i-keru, u-mu, u-mareru, ha-eru, and ha-yasu, totaling eight basic readings (the first two are on, while the rest are kun), or 12 if related verbs are counted as distinct.

On'yomi (Sino-Japanese reading)
The on'yomi (音読み), the Sino-Japanese reading, is the modern descendant of the Japanese approximation of the base Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was introduced. It was often previously referred to as translation reading, as it was recreated readings of the Chinese pronunciation but was not the Chinese pronunciation or reading itself, similar to the English pronunciation of Latin loanwords. There also exist kanji created by the Japanese and given an on'yomi reading despite not being a Chinese-derived or a Chinese-originating character. Some kanji were introduced from different parts of China at different times, and so have multiple on'yomi, and often multiple meanings. Kanji invented in Japan (kokuji) would not normally be expected to have on'yomi, but there are exceptions, such as the character 働 "to work", which has the kun'yomi "hatara(ku)" and the on'yomi "dō", and 腺 "gland", which has only the on'yomi "sen"—in both cases these come from the on'yomi of the phonetic component, respectively 動 "dō" and 泉 "sen".

Kun'yomi (native reading)
The kun'yomi (訓読み), the native reading, is a reading based on the pronunciation of a native Japanese word, or yamato kotoba, that closely approximated the meaning of the Chinese character when it was introduced. As with on'yomi, there can be multiple kun'yomi for the same kanji, and some kanji have no kun'yomi at all.

Ateji
Ateji (当て字) are characters used only for their sounds. In this case, pronunciation is still based on a standard reading, or used only for meaning (broadly a form of ateji, narrowly jukujikun). Therefore, only the full compound—not the individual character—has a reading. There are also special cases where the reading is completely different, often based on a historical or traditional reading.

The analogous phenomenon occurs to a much lesser degree in Chinese varieties, where there are literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters—borrowed readings and native readings. In Chinese these borrowed readings and native readings are etymologically related, since they are between Chinese varieties (which are related), not from Chinese to Japanese (which are not related). They thus form doublets and are generally similar, analogous to different on'yomi, reflecting different stages of Chinese borrowings into Japanese.

Gairaigo
Longer readings exist for non-Jōyō characters and non-kanji symbols, where a long gairaigo word may be the reading (this is classed as kun'yomi—see single character gairaigo, below)—the character 糎 has the seven kana reading センチメートル senchimētoru "centimeter", though it is generally written as "cm" (with two half-width characters, so occupying one space); another common example is '%' (the percent sign), which has the five kana reading パーセント pāsento.

Mixed readings
There are many kanji compounds that use a mixture of on'yomi and kun'yomi, known as jūbako (重箱) or yutō (湯桶) words (depending on the order), which are themselves examples of this kind of compound (they are autological words): the first character of jūbako is read using on'yomi, the second kun'yomi (on-kun, 重箱読み). It is the other way around with yu-tō (kun-on, 湯桶読み).

Formally, these are referred to as jūbako-yomi (重箱読み) and yutō-yomi (湯桶読み). In both these words, the on'yomi has a long vowel; long vowels in Japanese generally are derived from sound changes common to loans from Chinese, hence distinctive of on'yomi. These are the Japanese form of hybrid words. Other examples include basho (場所), kin'iro (金色) and aikidō (合気道).

Ateji often use mixed readings. For instance, the city of Sapporo (サッポロ), whose name derives from the Ainu language and has no meaning in Japanese, is written with the on-kun compound 札幌 (which includes sokuon as if it were a purely on compound).

Special readings
Gikun (義訓) and jukujikun (熟字訓) are readings of kanji combinations that have no direct correspondence to the characters' individual on'yomi or kun'yomi. From the point of view of the character, rather than the word, this is known as a nankun (難訓), and these are listed in kanji dictionaries under the entry for the character.

Gikun are other readings assigned to a character instead of its standard readings. An example is reading 寒 (meaning "cold") as fuyu ("winter") rather than the standard readings samu or kan, and instead of the usual spelling for fuyu of 冬. Another example is using 煙草 (lit. "smoke grass") with the reading tabako ("tobacco") rather than the otherwise-expected readings of *kemuri-gusa or *ensō. Some of these, such as for tabako, have become lexicalized, but in many cases this kind of use is typically non-standard and employed in specific contexts by individual writers. Aided with furigana, gikun could be used to convey complex literary or poetic effect (especially if the readings contradict the kanji), or clarification if the referent may not be obvious.

Jukujikun are when the standard kanji for a word are related to the meaning, but not the sound. The word is pronounced as a whole, not corresponding to sounds of individual kanji. For example, 今朝 ("this morning") is jukujikun. This word is not read as *ima'asa, the expected kun'yomi of the characters, and only infrequently as konchō, the on'yomi of the characters. The most common reading is kesa, a native bisyllabic Japanese word that may be seen as a single morpheme, or as a compound of ke (“this”, as in kefu, the older reading for 今日, “today”), and asa, “morning”. Likewise, 今日 ("today") is also jukujikun, usually read with the native reading kyō; its on'yomi, konnichi, does occur in certain words and expressions, especially in the broader sense "nowadays" or "current", such as 今日的 ("present-day"), although in the phrase konnichi wa ("good day"), konnichi is typically spelled wholly with hiragana rather than with the kanji 今日.

Jukujikun are primarily used for some native Japanese words, such as Yamato (大和 or 倭, the name of the dominant ethnic group of Japan, a former Japanese province as well as ancient name for Japan), and for some old borrowings, such as 柳葉魚 (shishamo, literally "willow leaf fish") from Ainu, 煙草 (tabako, literally “smoke grass”) from Portuguese, or 麦酒 (bīru, literally “wheat alcohol”) from Dutch, especially if the word was borrowed before the Meiji period. Words whose kanji are jukujikun are often usually written as hiragana (if native), or katakana (if borrowed); some old borrowed words are also written as hiragana, especially Portuguese loanwords such as かるた (karuta) from Portuguese "carta" (English “card”) or てんぷら (tempura) from Portuguese "tempora" (English “times, season”), as well as たばこ (tabako).

Sometimes, jukujikun can even have more kanji than there are syllables, examples being kera (啄木鳥, “woodpecker”), gumi (胡頽子, “silver berry, oleaster”), and Hozumi (八月朔日, a surname). This phenomenon is observed in animal names that are shortened and used as suffixes for zoological compound names, for example when 黄金虫, normally read as koganemushi, is shortened to kogane in 黒黄金虫 kurokogane, although zoological names are commonly spelled with katakana rather than with kanji. Outside zoology, this type of shortening only occurs on a handful of words, for example 大元帥 daigen(sui), or the historical male name suffix 右衛門 -emon, which was shortened from the word uemon.

The kanji compound for jukujikun is often idiosyncratic and created for the word, and there is no corresponding Chinese word with that spelling. In other cases, a kanji compound for an existing Chinese word is reused, where the Chinese word and on'yomi may or may not be used in Japanese. For example, 馴鹿 (“reindeer”) is jukujikun for tonakai, from Ainu, but the on'yomi reading of junroku is also used. In some cases, Japanese coinages have subsequently been borrowed back into Chinese, such as 鮟鱇 (ankō, “monkfish”).

The underlying word for jukujikun is a native Japanese word or foreign borrowing, which either does not have an existing kanji spelling (either kun'yomi or ateji) or for which a new kanji spelling is produced. Most often the word is a noun, which may be a simple noun (not a compound or derived from a verb), or may be a verb form or a fusional pronunciation. For example, the word 相撲 (sumō, “sumo”) is originally from the verb 争う (sumau, “to vie, to compete”), while 今日 (kyō, “today”) is fusional (from older ke, “this” + fu, “day”).

In rare cases, jukujikun is also applied to inflectional words (verbs and adjectives), in which case there is frequently a corresponding Chinese word. The most common example of an inflectional jukujikun is the adjective 可愛い (kawai-i, “cute”), originally kawafayu-i; the word is used in Chinese, but the corresponding on'yomi is not used in Japanese. By contrast, "appropriate" can be either 相応しい (fusawa-shii, as jukujikun) or 相応 (sōō, as on'yomi). Which reading to use can be discerned by the presence or absence of the -shii ending (okurigana). A common example of a verb with jukujikun is 流行る (haya-ru, “to spread, to be in vogue”), corresponding to on'yomi 流行 (ryūkō). A sample jukujikun deverbal (noun derived from a verb form) is 強請 (yusuri, “extortion”), from 強請る (yusu-ru, “to extort”), spelling from 強請 (kyōsei, “extortion”). Note that there are also compound verbs and, less commonly, compound adjectives, and while these may have multiple kanji without intervening characters, they are read using the usual kun'yomi. Examples include 面白い (omo-shiro-i, “interesting”, literally “face + white”) and 狡賢い (zuru-gashiko-i, “sly”, lit. “cunning, crafty + clever, smart”).

Typographically, the furigana for jukujikun are often written so they are centered across the entire word, or for inflectional words over the entire root—corresponding to the reading being related to the entire word—rather than each part of the word being centered over its corresponding character, as is often done for the usual phono-semantic readings.

Broadly speaking, jukujikun can be considered a form of ateji, though in narrow usage, "ateji" refers specifically to using characters for sound and not meaning (sound-spelling), whereas "jukujikun" refers to using characters for their meaning and not sound (meaning-spelling). Many jukujikun (established meaning-spellings) began as gikun (improvised meaning-spellings). Occasionally, a single word will have many such kanji spellings. An extreme example is hototogisu, which may be spelt in many ways, including 杜鵑, 時鳥, 子規, 不如帰, 霍公鳥, 蜀魂, 沓手鳥, 杜宇,田鵑, 沓直鳥, and 郭公—many of these variant spellings are particular to haiku poems.

Single character gairaigo
In some rare cases, an individual kanji has a reading that is borrowed from a modern foreign language (gairaigo), though most often these words are written in katakana. Notable examples include pēji (頁、ページ), botan (釦／鈕、ボタン), zero (零、ゼロ), and mētoru (米、メートル). These are classed as kun'yomi of a single character, because the character is being used for meaning only (without the Chinese pronunciation), rather than as ateji, which is the classification used when a gairaigo term is written as a compound (2 or more characters). However, unlike the vast majority of other kun'yomi, these readings are not native Japanese, but rather borrowed, so the "kun'yomi" label can be misleading. The readings are also written in katakana, unlike the usual hiragana for native kun'yomi. Note that most of these characters are for units, particularly SI units, in many cases using new characters (kokuji) coined during the Meiji period, such as kiromētoru (粁、キロメートル).

Nanori
Some kanji also have lesser-known readings called nanori (名乗り), which are mostly used for names (often given names) and, in general, are closely related to the kun'yomi. Place names sometimes also use nanori or, occasionally, unique readings not found elsewhere.

When to use which reading
Although there are general rules for when to use on'yomi and when to use kun'yomi, the language is littered with exceptions, and it is not always possible for even a native speaker to know how to read a character without prior knowledge (this is especially true for names, both of people and places); further, a given character may have multiple kun'yomi or on'yomi. When reading Japanese, one primarily recognizes words (multiple characters and okurigana) and their readings rather than individual characters and only guesses the readings of characters when trying to "sound out" an unrecognized word.

Homographs exist, which can sometimes be deduced from context, and sometimes cannot, requiring a glossary. For example, 今日 may be read either as kyō "today (informal)" (special fused reading for native word) or as konnichi "these days (formal)" (on'yomi); in formal writing, this will generally be read as konnichi. Multiple readings are common, such as in 豚汁 "pork soup", which is commonly pronounced both as ton-jiru (mixed on-kun) and buta-jiru (kun-kun), with ton being somewhat more common nationally. Inconsistencies abound—for example, 牛肉 gyū-niku "beef" and 羊肉 yō-niku "mutton" have on-on readings, but 豚肉 buta-niku "pork" and 鶏肉 tori-niku "poultry" have kun-on readings.

The main guideline is that a single kanji followed by okurigana (hiragana characters that are part of the word)—as used in native verbs and adjectives—always indicates kun'yomi, while kanji compounds (kango) usually use on'yomi, which is usually kan-on; however, other on'yomi are also common, and kun'yomi are also commonly used in kango. For a kanji in isolation without okurigana, it is typically read using their kun'yomi, though there are numerous exceptions. For example, 鉄 "iron" is usually read with the on'yomi tetsu rather than the kun'yomi kurogane. Chinese on'yomi which are not the common kan-on reading are a frequent cause of difficulty or mistakes when encountering unfamiliar words or for inexperienced readers, though skilled natives will recognize the word; a good example is ge-doku (解毒) (go-on), where (解) is usually instead read as kai.

Okurigana (送り仮名) are used with kun'yomi to mark the inflected ending of a native verb or adjective, or by convention. Japanese verbs and adjectives are closed class, and do not generally admit new words (borrowed Chinese vocabulary, which are nouns, can form verbs by adding -suru (〜する) at the end, and adjectives via 〜の -no or 〜な -na, but cannot become native Japanese vocabulary, which inflect). For example: 赤い aka-i "red", 新しい atara-shii "new", 見る mi-ru "(to) see". Okurigana can be used to indicate which kun'yomi to use, as in 食べる ta-beru versus 食う ku-u (casual), both meaning "(to) eat", but this is not always sufficient, as in 開く, which may be read as a-ku or hira-ku, both meaning "(to) open". 生 is a particularly complicated example, with multiple kun and on'yomi. Okurigana is also used for some nouns and adverbs, as in 情け nasake "sympathy", 必ず kanarazu "invariably", but not for 金 kane "money", for instance. Okurigana is an important aspect of kanji usage in Japanese; see that article for more information on kun'yomi orthography

Kanji occurring in compounds (multi-kanji words) (熟語) are generally read using on'yomi, especially for four-character compounds (yojijukugo). Though again, exceptions abound, for example, 情報 jōhō "information", 学校 gakkō "school", and 新幹線 shinkansen "bullet train" all follow this pattern. This isolated kanji versus compound distinction gives words for similar concepts completely different pronunciations. 北 "north" and 東 "east" use the kun'yomi kita and higashi, being stand-alone characters, but 北東 "northeast", as a compound, uses the on'yomi hokutō. This is further complicated by the fact that many kanji have more than one on'yomi: 生 is read as sei in 先生 sensei "teacher" but as shō in 一生 isshō "one's whole life". Meaning can also be an important indicator of reading; 易 is read i when it means "simple", but as eki when it means "divination", both being on'yomi for this character.

These rules of thumb have many exceptions. Kun'yomi compound words are not as numerous as those with on'yomi, but neither are they rare. Examples include 手紙 tegami "letter", 日傘 higasa "parasol", and the famous 神風 kamikaze "divine wind". Such compounds may also have okurigana, such as 空揚げ (also written 唐揚げ) karaage "Chinese-style fried chicken" and 折り紙 origami, although many of these can also be written with the okurigana omitted (for example, 空揚 or 折紙). In general, compounds coined in Japan using Japanese roots will be read in kun'yomi while those imported from China will be read in on'yomi.

Similarly, some on'yomi characters can also be used as words in isolation: 愛 ai "love", 禅 Zen, 点 ten "mark, dot". Most of these cases involve kanji that have no kun'yomi, so there can be no confusion, although exceptions do occur. Alone 金 may be read as kin "gold" or as kane "money, metal"; only context can determine the writer's intended reading and meaning.

Multiple readings have given rise to a number of homographs, in some cases having different meanings depending on how they are read. One example is 上手, which can be read in three different ways: jōzu (skilled), uwate (upper part), or kamite (stage left/house right). In addition, 上手い has the reading umai (skilled). More subtly, 明日 has three different readings, all meaning "tomorrow": ashita (casual), asu (polite), and myōnichi (formal). Furigana (reading glosses) is often used to clarify any potential ambiguities.

Conversely, in some cases homophonous terms may be distinguished in writing by different characters, but not so distinguished in speech, and hence potentially confusing. In some cases when it is important to distinguish these in speech, the reading of a relevant character may be changed. For example, 私立 (privately established, esp. school) and 市立 (city established) are both normally pronounced shi-ritsu; in speech these may be distinguished by the alternative pronunciations watakushi-ritsu and ichi-ritsu. More informally, in legal jargon 前文 "preamble" and 全文 "full text" are both pronounced zen-bun, so 前文 may be pronounced mae-bun for clarity, as in "Have you memorized the preamble [not 'whole text'] of the constitution?". As in these examples, this is primarily using a kun'yomi for one character in a normally on'yomi term.

As stated above, jūbako and yutō readings are also not uncommon. Indeed, all four combinations of reading are possible: on-on, kun-kun, kun-on and on-kun.

Legalese
Certain words take different readings depending on whether the context concerns legal matters or not. For example:

Ambiguous readings
In some instances where even context cannot easily provide clarity for homophones, alternative readings or mixed readings can be used instead of regular readings to avoid ambiguity. For example:

There are also cases where the words are technically heterophones, but they have similar meanings and pronunciations, therefore liable to mishearing and misunderstanding.

Place names
Several famous place names, including those of Japan itself (日本 Nihon or sometimes Nippon), those of some cities such as Tokyo (東京 Tōkyō) and Kyoto (京都 Kyōto), and those of the main islands Honshu (本州 Honshū), Kyushu (九州 Kyūshū), Shikoku (四国 Shikoku), and Hokkaido (北海道 Hokkaidō) are read with on'yomi; however, the majority of Japanese place names are read with kun'yomi: 大阪 Ōsaka, 青森 Aomori, 箱根 Hakone. Names often use characters and readings that are not in common use outside of names. When characters are used as abbreviations of place names, their reading may not match that in the original. The Osaka (大阪) and Kobe (神戸) baseball team, the Hanshin (阪神) Tigers, take their name from the on'yomi of the second kanji of Ōsaka and the first of Kōbe. The name of the Keisei (京成) railway line—linking Tokyo (東京) and Narita (成田)—is formed similarly, although the reading of 京 from 東京 is kei, despite kyō already being an on'yomi in the word Tōkyō.

Japanese family names are also usually read with kun'yomi: 山田 Yamada, 田中 Tanaka, 鈴木 Suzuki. Japanese given names often have very irregular readings. Although they are not typically considered jūbako or yutō, they often contain mixtures of kun'yomi, on'yomi and nanori, such as 大助 Daisuke [on-kun], 夏美 Natsumi [kun-on]. Being chosen at the discretion of the parents, the readings of given names do not follow any set rules, and it is impossible to know with certainty how to read a person's name without independent verification. Parents can be quite creative, and rumours abound of children called 地球 Āsu ("Earth") and 天使 Enjeru ("Angel"); neither are common names, and have normal readings chikyū and tenshi respectively. Some common Japanese names can be written in multiple ways, e.g., Akira can be written as 亮, 彰, 明, 顕, 章, 聴, 光, 晶, 晄, 彬, 昶, 了, 秋良, 明楽, 日日日, 亜紀良, 安喜良 and many other characters and kanji combinations not listed, Satoshi can be written as 聡, 哲, 哲史, 悟, 佐登史, 暁, 訓, 哲士, 哲司, 敏, 諭, 智, 佐登司, 總, 里史, 三十四, 了, 智詞, etc., and Haruka can be written as 遥, 春香, 晴香, 遥香, 春果, 晴夏, 春賀, 春佳, and several other possibilities. Common patterns do exist, however, allowing experienced readers to make a good guess for most names. To alleviate any confusion on how to pronounce the names of other Japanese people, most official Japanese documents require Japanese to write their names in both kana and kanji.

Chinese place names and Chinese personal names appearing in Japanese texts, if spelled in kanji, are almost invariably read with on'yomi. Especially for older and well-known names, the resulting Japanese pronunciation may differ widely from that used by modern Chinese speakers. For example, Mao Zedong's name is pronounced as Mō Takutō (毛沢東) in Japanese, and the name of the legendary Monkey King, Sun Wukong, is pronounced Son Gokū (孫悟空) in Japanese.

Today, Chinese names that are not well known in Japan are often spelled in katakana instead, in a form much more closely approximating the native Chinese pronunciation. Alternatively, they may be written in kanji with katakana furigana. Many such cities have names that come from non-Chinese languages like Mongolian or Manchu. Examples of such not-well-known Chinese names include: Internationally renowned Chinese-named cities tend to imitate the older English pronunciations of their names, regardless of the kanji's on'yomi or the Mandarin or Cantonese pronunciation, and can be written in either katakana or kanji. Examples include:

Notes:
 * Guangzhou, the city, is pronounced Kōshū, while Guangdong, its province, is pronounced Kanton, not *Kōtō (in this case, opting for a tō-on reading rather than the usual kan-on reading).
 * Kaohsiung was originally pronounced Takao (or similar) in Hokkien and Japanese. It received this written name (kanji/Chinese) from Japanese, and later its spoken Mandarin name from the corresponding characters. The English name "Kaohsiung" derived from its Mandarin pronunciation. Today it is pronounced either カオシュン or タカオ in Japanese.
 * Taipei is generally pronounced たいほく in Japanese.

In some cases the same kanji can appear in a given word with different readings. Normally this occurs when a character is duplicated and the reading of the second character has voicing (rendaku), as in 人人 hito-bito "people" (more often written with the iteration mark as 人々), but in rare cases the readings can be unrelated, as in tobi-haneru (跳び跳ねる).

Pronunciation assistance
Because of the ambiguities involved, kanji sometimes have their pronunciation for the given context spelled out in ruby characters known as furigana, (small kana written above or to the right of the character) or kumimoji (small kana written in-line after the character). This is especially true in texts for children or foreign learners. It is also used in newspapers and manga for rare or unusual readings, or for situations like the first time a character's name is given, and for characters not included in the officially recognized set of essential kanji. Works of fiction sometimes use furigana to create new "words" by giving normal kanji non-standard readings, or to attach a foreign word rendered in katakana as the reading for a kanji or kanji compound of the same or similar meaning.

Spelling words
Conversely, specifying a given kanji, or spelling out a kanji word—whether the pronunciation is known or not—can be complicated, due to the fact that there is not a commonly used standard way to refer to individual kanji (one does not refer to "kanji #237"), and that a given reading does not map to a single kanji—indeed there are many homophonous words, not simply individual characters, particularly for kango (with on'yomi). It is easiest to write the word out—either on paper or tracing it in the air—or look it up (given the pronunciation) in a dictionary, particularly an electronic dictionary; when this is not possible, such as when speaking over the phone or writing implements are not available (and tracing in air is too complicated), various techniques can be used. These include giving kun'yomi for characters—these are often unique—using a well-known word with the same character (and preferably the same pronunciation and meaning), and describing the character via its components. For example, one may explain how to spell the word kōshinryō (香辛料) via the words kao-ri (香り), kara-i (辛い), and in-ryō (飲料)—the first two use the kun'yomi, the third is a well-known compound—saying "kaori, karai, ryō as in inryō."

Dictionaries
In dictionaries, both words and individual characters have readings glossed, via various conventions. Native words and Sino-Japanese vocabulary are glossed in hiragana (for both kun and on readings), while borrowings (gairaigo)—including modern borrowings from Chinese—are glossed in katakana; this is the standard writing convention also used in furigana. By contrast, readings for individual characters are conventionally written in katakana for on readings, and hiragana for kun readings. Kun readings may further have a separator to indicate which characters are okurigana, and which are considered readings of the character itself. For example, in the entry for 食, the reading corresponding to the basic verb eat (食べる) may be written as た.べる (ta.beru), to indicate that ta is the reading of the character itself. Further, kanji dictionaries often list compounds including irregular readings of a kanji.

Local developments and divergences from Chinese
Since kanji are essentially Chinese hanzi used to write Japanese, the majority of characters used in modern Japanese still retain their Chinese meaning, physical resemblance with some of their modern traditional Chinese characters counterparts, and a degree of similarity with Classical Chinese pronunciation imported to Japan from the 5th to 9th centuries. Nevertheless, after centuries of development, there is a notable number of kanji used in modern Japanese which have different meaning from hanzi used in modern Chinese. Such differences are the result of:
 * the use of characters created in Japan,
 * characters that have been given different meanings in Japanese, and
 * post-World War II simplifications (shinjitai) of the character.

Likewise, the process of character simplification in mainland China since the 1950s has resulted in the fact that Japanese speakers who have not studied Chinese may not recognize some simplified characters.

Kokuji
In Japanese, Kokuji (国字) refers to Chinese characters made outside of China. Specifically, kanji made in Japan are referred to as Wasei kanji (和製漢字). They are primarily formed in the usual way of Chinese characters, namely by combining existing components, though using a combination that is not used in China. The corresponding phenomenon in Korea is called gukja, a cognate name; there are however far fewer Korean-coined characters than Japanese-coined ones. Other languages using the Chinese family of scripts sometimes have far more extensive systems of native characters, most significantly Vietnamese chữ Nôm, which comprises over 20,000 characters used throughout traditional Vietnamese writing, and Zhuang sawndip, which comprises over 10,000 characters, which are still in use.

Kokkun
In addition to kokuji, there are kanji that have been given meanings in Japanese that are different from their original Chinese meanings. These are not considered kokuji but are instead called kokkun (国訓) and include characters such as the following:

Types of kanji by category
Han-dynasty scholar Xu Shen, in his 2nd-century dictionary Shuowen Jiezi, classified Chinese characters into six categories ( liùshū, Japanese: 六書 rikusho). The traditional classification is still taught but is problematic and is no longer the focus of modern lexicographic practice, as some categories are not clearly defined, nor are they mutually exclusive: the first four refer to structural composition, while the last two refer to usage.

Shōkei moji (象形文字)
Shōkei (Mandarin: xiàngxíng) characters are pictographic sketches of the object they represent. For example, 目 is an eye, while 木 is a tree. The current forms of the characters are very different from the originals, though their representations are more clear in oracle bone script and seal script. These pictographic characters make up only a small fraction of modern characters.

Shiji moji (指事文字)
Shiji (Mandarin: zhǐshì) characters are ideographs, often called "simple ideographs" or "simple indicatives" to distinguish them and tell the difference from compound ideographs (below). They are usually simple graphically and represent an abstract concept such as 上 "up" or "above" and 下 "down" or "below". These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.

Kaii moji (会意文字)
Kaii (Mandarin: huìyì) characters are compound ideographs, often called "compound indicatives", "associative compounds", or just "ideographs". These are usually a combination of pictographs that combine semantically to present an overall meaning. An example of this type is 休 (rest) from 亻 (person radical) and 木 (tree). Another is the kokuji 峠 (mountain pass) made from 山 (mountain), 上 (up) and 下 (down). These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.

Keisei moji (形声文字)
Keisei (Mandarin: xíngshēng) characters are phono-semantic or radical-phonetic compounds, sometimes called "semantic-phonetic", "semasio-phonetic", or "phonetic-ideographic" characters, are by far the largest category, making up about 90% of the characters in the standard lists; however, some of the most frequently used kanji belong to one of the three groups mentioned above, so keisei moji will usually make up less than 90% of the characters in a text. Typically they are made up of two components, one of which (most commonly, but by no means always, the left or top element) suggests the general category of the meaning or semantic context, and the other (most commonly the right or bottom element) approximates the pronunciation. The pronunciation relates to the original Chinese, and may now only be distantly detectable in the modern Japanese on'yomi of the kanji; it generally has no relation at all to kun'yomi. The same is true of the semantic context, which may have changed over the centuries or in the transition from Chinese to Japanese. As a result, it is a common error in folk etymology to fail to recognize a phono-semantic compound, typically instead inventing a compound-indicative explanation.

Tenchū moji (転注文字)
Tenchū (Mandarin: zhuǎnzhù) characters have variously been called "derivative characters", "derivative cognates", or translated as "mutually explanatory" or "mutually synonymous" characters; this is the most problematic of the six categories, as it is vaguely defined. It may refer to kanji where the meaning or application has become extended. For example, 楽 is used for 'music' and 'comfort, ease', with different pronunciations in Chinese reflected in the two different on'yomi, gaku "music" and raku "pleasure".

Kasha moji (仮借文字)
Kasha (Mandarin: jiǎjiè) are rebuses, sometimes called "phonetic loans". The etymology of the characters follows one of the patterns above, but the present-day meaning is completely unrelated to this. A character was appropriated to represent a similar-sounding word. For example, 来 in ancient Chinese was originally a pictograph for "wheat". Its syllable was homophonous with the verb meaning "to come", and the character is used for that verb as a result, without any embellishing "meaning" element attached. The character for wheat 麦, originally meant "to come", being a keisei moji having 'foot' at the bottom for its meaning part and "wheat" at the top for sound. The two characters swapped meaning, so today the more common word has the simpler character. This borrowing of sounds has a very long history.

Related symbols
The iteration mark (々) is used to indicate that the preceding kanji is to be repeated, functioning similarly to a ditto mark in English. It is pronounced as though the kanji were written twice in a row, for example iroiro and tokidoki (時々). This mark also appears in personal and place names, as in the surname Sasaki (佐々木). This symbol is a simplified version of the kanji 仝, a variant of dō (同).

Another abbreviated symbol is ヶ, in appearance a small katakana ke, but actually a simplified version of the kanji 箇, a general counter. It is pronounced ka when used to indicate quantity (such as 六ヶ月, rokkagetsu "six months") or ga if used as a genitive (as in 関ヶ原 sekigahara "Sekigahara").

The way how these symbols may be produced on a computer depends on the operating system. In macOS, typing じおくり will reveal the symbol 々 as well as ヽ, ゝ and ゞ. To produce 〻, type おどりじ. Under Windows, typing くりかえし will reveal some of these symbols, while in Google IME, おどりじ may be used.

Collation
Kanji, whose thousands of symbols defy ordering by conventions such as those used for the Latin script, are often collated using the traditional Chinese radical-and-stroke sorting method. In this system, common components of characters are identified; these are called radicals. Characters are grouped by their primary radical, then ordered by number of pen strokes within radicals. For example, the kanji character 桜, meaning "cherry", is sorted as a ten-stroke character under the four-stroke primary radical 木 meaning "tree". When there is no obvious radical or more than one radical, convention governs which is used for collation.

Other kanji sorting methods, such as the SKIP system, have been devised by various authors.

Modern general-purpose Japanese dictionaries (as opposed to specifically character dictionaries) generally collate all entries, including words written using kanji, according to their kana representations (reflecting the way they are pronounced). The gojūon ordering of kana is normally used for this purpose.

Kanji education

Japanese schoolchildren are expected to learn 1,026 basic kanji, the kyōiku kanji, before finishing the sixth grade. The order in which these characters are learned is fixed. The kyōiku kanji list is a subset of a larger list, originally of 1,945 kanji and extended to 2,136 in 2010, known as the jōyō kanji required for the level of fluency necessary to read newspapers and literature in Japanese. This larger list of characters is to be mastered by the end of the ninth grade. Schoolchildren learn the characters by repetition and radical.

Students studying Japanese as a foreign language are often required by a curriculum to acquire kanji without having first learned the vocabulary associated with them. Strategies for these learners vary from copying-based methods to mnemonic-based methods such as those used in James Heisig's series Remembering the Kanji. Other textbooks use methods based on the etymology of the characters, such as Mathias and Habein's The Complete Guide to Everyday Kanji and Henshall's A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters. Pictorial mnemonics, as in the text Kanji Pict-o-graphix by Michael Rowley, are also seen.

The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation provides the Kanji kentei (日本漢字能力検定試験 Nihon kanji nōryoku kentei shiken; "Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude"), which tests the ability to read and write kanji. The highest level of the Kanji kentei tests about six thousand kanji.

Glyph conversion

 * A simple Shinjitai—Kyūjitai converter
 * A practical Shinjitai—Kyūjitai—Simplified Chinese character converter
 * A complex Shinjitai—Kyūjitai converter
 * A downloadable Shinjitai—Kyūjitai—Simplified Chinese character converter

title: Kanji


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Norfolk

Norfolk is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and east, Cambridgeshire to the west, and Suffolk to the south. The largest settlement is the city of Norwich.

The county has an area of 2074 mi2 and a population of 859,400. It is largely rural with few large towns: after Norwich (147,895), the largest settlements are King's Lynn (42,800) in the north-west, Great Yarmouth (38,693) in the east, and Thetford (24,340) in the south. For local government purposes Norfolk is a non-metropolitan county with seven districts.

The west of Norfolk is part of the Fens, an extremely flat former marsh. The centre of the county is gently undulating lowland; its northern coast is an area of outstanding natural beauty, and in the south is part of Thetford Forest. In the east are the Broads, a network of rivers and lakes which extend into Suffolk. The area is protected by the Broads Authority and has similar status to a national park. The geology of the county includes clay and chalk deposits, which make its coast susceptible to erosion.

There is evidence of Prehistoric settlement in Norfolk. In the Roman era the region was home to the Iceni, whose leader Boudica led a major revolt in AD60. The Angles settled the area in the fifth century, and it became part of the Kingdom of East Anglia. During the later Middle Ages the county was very prosperous and heavily involved in the wool trade; this allowed the construction of many large churches. In 1549 Norfolk was the scene of Kett's Rebellion, which unsuccessfully protested the enclosure of land. The county was not heavily industrialised during the Industrial Revolution, and Norwich lost its status as one of England's largest cities. The contemporary economy is largely based on agriculture and tourism.

History
The area that was to become Norfolk was settled in pre-Roman times (there were Palaeolithic settlers as early as 950,000 years ago), with camps along the higher land in the west, where flints could be quarried. A Brittonic tribe, the Iceni, emerged in the 1st century BC. The Iceni revolted against the Roman invasion in AD 47, and again in 60 led by Boudica. The crushing of the second rebellion opened the area to the Romans. During the Roman era roads and ports were constructed throughout the area and farming was widespread.

Situated on the east coast, the homelands of the Iceni were vulnerable to attacks from continental Europe and other parts of Britain, and forts were built to defend against raids by the Saxons and the Picts. A period of depopulation, which may have been due to these threats, seems to have followed the departure of the Romans. Soon afterward, Germanic peoples from the North Sea area settled in the region. Though they became known as Angles, they were likely not affiliated to any tribe in particular at the time of their migration. It is thought that the settlement here was early (possibly beginning at the start of the fifth century, thereby preceding the alleged date of Hengist and Horsa's arrival in Kent) and that it occurred on a large scale.

By the 5th century the Angles had established control of the region and later became the "north folk" and the "south folk"; hence "Norfolk" and "Suffolk". Norfolk, Suffolk and several adjacent areas became the kingdom of East Anglia (one of the heptarchy), which later merged with Mercia and then with Wessex. The influence of the early English settlers can be seen in the many place names ending in "-ham", "-ingham" and "-ton". Endings such as "-by" and "-thorpe" are also fairly common, indicating Danish toponyms: in the 9th century the region again came under attack, this time from Danes who killed the king, Edmund the Martyr. Several place names around the Fenland area contain Celtic elements; this has been taken by some scholars to represent a possibly significant concentration of Britons in the area.

In the centuries before the Norman Conquest the wetlands of the east of the county began to be converted to farmland, and settlements grew in these areas. Migration into East Anglia must have been high: by the time of the Domesday Book survey it was one of the most densely populated parts of the British Isles. During the high and late Middle Ages the county developed arable agriculture and woollen industries. Norfolk's prosperity at that time is evident from the county's large number of medieval churches: out of an original total of over one thousand some 659 have survived, more than in any other county in Britain and the greatest concentration in the world. The economy was in decline by the time of the Black Death, which dramatically reduced the population in 1349.

Kett's Rebellion occurred in Norfolk during the reign of Edward VI, largely in response to the enclosure of land by landlords, leaving peasants with nowhere to graze their animals, and to the general abuses of power by the nobility. It was led by Robert Kett, a yeoman farmer, who was joined by recruits from Norwich and the surrounding countryside. His group numbered some 16,000 by the time the rebels stormed Norwich on 29 July 1549 and took the city. Kett's rebellion ended on 27 August when the rebels were defeated by an army under the leadership of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland at the Battle of Dussindale. Some 3,000 rebels were killed. Kett was captured, held in the Tower of London, tried for treason, and hanged from the walls of Norwich Castle.

By the late 16th century Norwich had grown to become the second-largest city in England, but over one-third of its population died in the plague epidemic of 1579, and in 1665 the Great Plague again killed around one-third of the population. During the English Civil War Norfolk was largely Parliamentarian. The economy and agriculture of the region declined somewhat. During the Industrial Revolution Norfolk developed little industry, except in Norwich, which was a late addition to the railway network.

Early military units included the Norfolk Militia. In the 20th century the county developed a role in aviation. The first development in airfields came with the First World War; there was then a massive expansion during the Second World War with the growth of the Royal Air Force and the influx of the American USAAF 8th Air Force which operated from many Norfolk airfields. The local British Army regiments included the Royal Norfolk Regiment (now the Royal Anglian Regiment) and the Norfolk Yeomanry. During the Second World War agriculture rapidly intensified, and it has remained very intensive since, with the establishment of large fields for growing cereals and oilseed rape.

Economy and industry
In 1998 Norfolk had a Gross Domestic Product of £9,319 million, which represents 1.5% of England's economy and 1.25% of the United Kingdom's economy. The GDP per head was £11,825, compared to £13,635 for East Anglia, £12,845 for England and £12,438 for the United Kingdom. In 1999–2000 the county had an unemployment rate of 5.6%, compared to 5.8% for England and 6.0% for the UK.

Data from 2017 provided a useful update on the county's economy. The median hourly gross pay was £12.17 and the median weekly pay was £496.80; on a per year basis, the median gross income was £25,458. The employment rate among persons aged 16 to 64 was 74.2% while the unemployment rate was 4.6%. The Norfolk economy was "treading water with manufacturing sales and recruitment remaining static in the first quarter of the year" according to research published in April 2018. A spokesperson for the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce made this comment: "At a time when Norfolk firms face steep up-front costs, the apprenticeship system is in crisis, roads are being allowed to crumble, mobile phone and broadband 'not-spots' are multiplying, it's obvious that the key to improved productivity and competitiveness lies in getting the basics right". The solution was seen as a need for the UK government to provide "a far stronger domestic economic agenda ... to fix the fundamentals needed for business to thrive here..."

In 2017, tourism was adding £3.25 billion to the economy per year and supported some 65,000 jobs, being the fifth most important employment in Norfolk. The visitor economy had increased in value by more than £500 million since 2012.

Important business sectors also include energy (oil, gas and renewables), advanced engineering and manufacturing, and food and farming.

Much of Norfolk's fairly flat and fertile land has been drained for use as arable land. The principal arable crops are sugar beet, wheat, barley (for brewing) and oil seed rape. The county also boasts a saffron grower. Over 20% of employment in the county is in the agricultural and food industries.

Well-known companies in Norfolk are Aviva (formerly Norwich Union), Colman's (part of Unilever), Lotus Cars and Bernard Matthews Farms. The Construction Industry Training Board is based on the former airfield of RAF Bircham Newton. Brewer Greene King, food producer Cranswick and feed supplier ForFarmers were seeing growth in 2016–2017.

A local enterprise partnership was being established by business leaders to help grow jobs across Norfolk and Suffolk. They secured an enterprise zone to help grow businesses in the energy sector, and established the two counties as a centre for growing services and products for the green economy.

To help local industry in Norwich, the local council offered a wireless internet service, but this was subsequently withdrawn as funding had ceased.

The fishery business still continued in 2018, with individuals such as John Lee, a fifth generation crabman, who sells Cromer Crabs to eateries such as M Restaurants and the Blueprint Café. The problem that he has found is attracting young people to this small industry which calls for working many hours per week during the season. Lobster trapping also continued in North Norfolk, around Sheringham and Cromer, for example.

Management of the shoreline
Norfolk's low-lying land and easily eroded cliffs, many of which are composed of chalk and clay, make it vulnerable to weathering by the sea. The most recent major erosion event occurred during the North Sea flood of 1953.

The low-lying section of coast between Kelling and Lowestoft Ness in Suffolk is currently managed by the British Environment Agency to protect the Broads from sea flooding. Management policy for the North Norfolk coastline is described in the "North Norfolk Shoreline Management Plan" published in 2006, but has yet to be accepted by local authorities. The Shoreline Management Plan states that the stretch of coast will be protected for at least another 50 years, but that in the event of sea level rise and post-glacial lowering of land levels in the South East, there may a need for further research to inform future management decisions, including the possibility that the sea defences may have to be realigned to a more sustainable position. Natural England have contributed some research into the impacts on the environment of various realignment options. The draft report of their research was leaked to the press, who created great anxiety by reporting that Natural England plan to abandon a large section of the Norfolk Broads, villages and farmland to the sea to save the rest of the Norfolk coastline from the impact of any adverse climate change.

Television
The county is covered by BBC East and ITV Anglia, which both broadcast from Norwich. Television signals are received from the Tacolneston TV transmitter. However, northwestern parts of Norfolk including King's Lynn, Hunstanton and Wells-next-the-Sea are covered by BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, broadcasting from Hull, and ITV Yorkshire, which broadcast from Leeds. The area receives its television signals from the Belmont TV transmitter.

Radio
BBC Local Radio for the county is served by BBC Radio Norfolk. County-wide commercial radio stations are Heart East, Greatest Hits Radio East, Amber Radio, and Kiss. Community based stations are Future Radio (serving Norwich), Harbour Radio (for Great Yarmouth), KL1 Radio (covering North West Norfolk) and Poppyland Community Radio (serving North Norfolk).

Newspapers
Norfolk is served by these local newspapers:
 * Eastern Daily Press (county-wide)
 * Norwich Evening News (Norwich)
 * Great Yarmouth Mercury (Great Yarmouth)
 * Lynn News (King's Lynn & Hunstanton)
 * Diss Express (Diss)
 * North Norfolk News (North Norfolk)

Primary and secondary education
Before 2011, Norfolk had a completely comprehensive state education or "maintained" system managed by Norfolk County Council, with secondary school age from 11 to 16 or in some schools with sixth forms, 18 years old. Since then, a number of schools formerly in the "maintained" system have left it to become academies, or members of academy groups. Others have become free schools. Both academies and free schools are still publicly funded by the Department of Education but are not with county council management.

In many of the rural areas, there is no nearby sixth form, and so sixth form colleges are found in larger towns. There are twelve private, or private schools, including Gresham's School in Holt in the north of the county, Thetford Grammar School in Thetford, which is Britain's fifth oldest extant school, Langley School in Loddon, and several in the city of Norwich, including Norwich School and Norwich High School for Girls. The King's Lynn district has the largest school population. Norfolk is also home to Wymondham College, the UK's largest remaining state boarding school.

Tertiary education
The University of East Anglia is located on the outskirts of Norwich, and Norwich University of the Arts is based in seven buildings in and around St George's Street in the city centre, next to the River Wensum.

The City College Norwich and the College of West Anglia are colleges covering Norwich and King's Lynn as well as Norfolk as a whole. Easton & Otley College, 7 mi west of Norwich, provides agriculture-based courses for the county, parts of Suffolk, and nationally.

The University of Suffolk also runs higher education courses in Norfolk, from multiple locations including Great Yarmouth College.

Local

Norfolk is administered by Norfolk County Council, which is the top tier local government authority, based at County Hall in Norwich. For details of the authority click on the link Norfolk County Council.

Below Norfolk County Council the county is divided into seven second tier district councils: Breckland District, Broadland District, Great Yarmouth Borough, King's Lynn and West Norfolk Borough, North Norfolk District, Norwich City and South Norfolk District.

Below the second tier councils the majority of the county is divided into parish and town councils, the lowest tier of local government (the only exceptions being parts of Norwich and King's Lynn urban areas).

Currently the Conservative Party control five of the seven district councils: Breckland District, Broadland District, King's Lynn and West Norfolk Borough, Great Yarmouth Borough and South Norfolk District while Norwich City is controlled by the Labour Party and North Norfolk District by the Liberal Democrats.

Norfolk County Council has been under Conservative control since 2017. There have been two periods when the council has not been run by the Conservative Party, both when no party had overall control, these were 1993–2001 and 2013–2017. For the full County Council election results for 2017 and previous elections click on the link Norfolk County Council elections.

National
The county is divided into ten parliamentary constituencies, with Waveney Valley straddling the border with Suffolk:

In the 1945 United Kingdom general election, all seats in Norfolk were won by the Labour Party and the National Liberal Party.

In the 2010 General Election seven seats were held by the Conservatives and two by the Liberal Democrats. The Labour Party no longer held the urban constituencies they once held in Norwich North and Great Yarmouth, leaving them with no MP's in the whole of East Anglia; the former Labour Home Secretary Charles Clarke was a high level casualty of that election.

In the 2015 General Election seven seats were won by the Conservative Party, with Labour winning Norwich South and the Liberal Democrats winning North Norfolk.

In the 2017 General Election the 2015 result was repeated.

In the 2024 General Election, Norfolk became the only county in the United Kingdom to be represented by MPs from five different parties.

Norwich Unitary Authority dispute (2006–2010)
In October 2006, the Department for Communities and Local Government produced a Local Government White Paper inviting councils to submit proposals for unitary restructuring. In January 2007 Norwich submitted its proposal, but this was rejected in December 2007 as it did not meet the criteria for acceptance. In February 2008, the Boundary Committee for England (from 1 April 2010 incorporated in the Local Government Boundary Commission for England) was asked to consider alternative proposals for the whole or part of Norfolk, including whether Norwich should become a unitary authority, separate from Norfolk County Council. In December 2009, the Boundary Committee recommended a single unitary authority covering all of Norfolk, including Norwich.

However, on 10 February 2010, it was announced that, contrary to the December 2009 recommendation of the Boundary Committee, Norwich would be given separate unitary status. The proposed change was strongly resisted, principally by Norfolk County Council and the Conservative opposition in Parliament. Reacting to the announcement, Norfolk County Council issued a statement that it would seek leave to challenge the decision in the courts. A letter was leaked to the local media in which the Permanent Secretary for the Department for Communities and Local Government noted that the decision did not meet all the criteria and that the risk of it "being successfully challenged in judicial review proceedings is very high". The Shadow Local Government and Planning Minister, Bob Neill, stated that should the Conservative Party win the 2010 general election, they would reverse the decision.

Following the 2010 general election, Eric Pickles was appointed Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government on 12 May 2010 in a Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government. According to press reports, he instructed his department to take urgent steps to reverse the decision and maintain the status quo in line with the Conservative Party manifesto. However, the unitary plans were supported by the Liberal Democrat group on the city council, and by Simon Wright, LibDem MP for Norwich South, who intended to lobby the party leadership to allow the changes to go ahead.

The Local Government Act 2010 to reverse the unitary decision for Norwich (and Exeter and Suffolk) received Royal Assent on 16 December 2010. The disputed award of unitary status had meanwhile been referred to the High Court, and on 21 June 2010 the court (Mr. Justice Ouseley, judge) ruled it unlawful, and revoked it. The city has therefore failed to attain unitary status, and the two-tier arrangement of County and District Councils (with Norwich City Council counted among the latter) remains as of 2017.

Emergency services

 * Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service
 * East of England Ambulance Service
 * East Anglian Air Ambulance
 * Norfolk Constabulary
 * British Transport Police
 * HM Coastguard

Settlements

Norfolk's county town and only city is Norwich, one of the largest settlements in England during the Norman era. Norwich is home to the University of East Anglia, and is the county's main business and culture centre. Other principal towns include the port town of King's Lynn and the seaside resort and Broads gateway town of Great Yarmouth.

Based on the 2011 Census the county's largest centres of population are: Norwich (213,166), Great Yarmouth (63,434), King's Lynn (46,093), Thetford (24,883), Dereham (20,651), Wymondham (13,587), North Walsham (12,463), Attleborough (10,549), Downham Market (9,994), Diss (9,829), Fakenham (8,285), Cromer (7,749), Sheringham (7,367) and Swaffham (7,258). There are also several smaller market towns: Aylsham (6,016), Harleston (4,458) and Holt (3,810).

Much of the county remains rural in nature and Norfolk is believed to have around 200 lost settlements which have been largely or totally depopulated since the medieval period. These include places lost to coastal erosion, agricultural enclosure, depopulation and the establishment of the Stanford Training Area in 1940.

Roads
Norfolk is one of the few counties in England that does not have a motorway. The A11 connects Norfolk to Cambridge and London, via the M11. From the west, there are only two routes from Norfolk that provide a direct link with the A1: the A47 to the East Midlands and Birmingham, via Peterborough, and the A17 to the East Midlands, via Lincolnshire. These two routes both meet at King's Lynn, which is also the starting point of the A10, providing West Norfolk with a direct link with London, via Ely, Cambridge and Hertford.

Railways
There are two main railway lines that link Norfolk with London. The Great Eastern Main Line hosts inter-city services from Norwich to Liverpool Street, via Ipswich and Colchester. The Fen line provides regular services between King's Lynn and King's Cross, via Ely and Cambridge.

In addition, the Breckland line provides access from Norwich and Thetford to destinations to the west including Peterborough, Nottingham, Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool.

Air
Norwich International Airport provides flights to various European destinations, including a link to Amsterdam which offers onward flights throughout the world.

Dialect, accent and nickname
The Norfolk dialect is also known as "Broad Norfolk", although over the modern age much of the vocabulary and many of the phrases have died out due to a number of factors, such as radio, TV and people from other parts of the country coming to Norfolk. As a result, the speech of Norfolk is more of an accent than a dialect, though one part retained from the Norfolk dialect is the distinctive grammar of the region.

People from Norfolk are sometimes known as Norfolk Dumplings, an allusion to the flour dumplings that were traditionally a significant part of the local diet.

More cutting, perhaps, was the alleged pejorative medical slang term "Normal for Norfolk", alluding to the county's perceived status as a quirky rustic backwater due to a high level of inbreeding among residents.

Tourism
Norfolk is a popular tourist destination and has several major holiday attractions. There are many seaside resorts, including some of the finest British beaches, such as those at Great Yarmouth, Cromer and Holkham. Norfolk contains the Broads and other areas of outstanding natural beauty and many areas of the coast are wild bird sanctuaries and reserves with some areas designated as national parks such as the Norfolk Coast AONB.

The King's residence at Sandringham House in Sandringham provides a year-round tourist attraction whilst the coast and some rural areas are popular locations for people from the conurbations to purchase weekend holiday homes. Arthur Conan Doyle first conceived the idea for The Hound of the Baskervilles whilst holidaying in Cromer with Bertram Fletcher Robinson, after hearing local folklore tales regarding the mysterious hound known as Black Shuck.

Amusement parks and zoos
Norfolk has several amusement parks and zoos.

 * Thrigby Hall near Great Yarmouth was built in 1736 by Joshua Smith Esquire and features a zoo which houses a large tiger enclosure, primate enclosures and the swamp house which has many crocodiles and alligators.
 * Holkham Hall is an 18th-century stately home and visitor attraction, constructed in the Palladian style and at the centre of a 3,000-acre deer park on the North Norfolk coast with a woodland play area, walled garden and farming exhibition.
 * Roarr! Dinosaur Adventure (formerly Dinosaur Adventure) is a dinosaur themed adventure park in Lenwade. It is set in 85 acres of parkland and has a dinosaur trail, indoor play area, high ropes course and outdoor water play area.
 * Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach is a free-entry theme park, hosting over twenty large rides as well as a crazy golf course, water attractions, children's rides and "white knuckle" rides.
 * BeWILDerwood is an adventure park situated in the Norfolk Broads and is the setting for the book A Boggle at BeWILDerwood by local children's author Tom Blofeld.
 * Britannia Pier on the coast of Great Yarmouth has rides which include a ghost train. Also on the pier is the famous Britannia Pier Theatre.
 * Banham Zoo is set amongst 35 acre of parkland and gardens with enclosures for animals including big cats, birds of prey, siamangs and shire horses. Its annual visitor attendance is in excess of 200,000 people.
 * Pensthorpe Nature Reserve, near the town of Fakenham in north Norfolk, is a nature reserve with many captive birds and animals. Such species include native birds such as lapwing and Eurasian crane, to much more exotic examples like Marabou stork, Greater flamingo, and Manchurian crane. The site played host to the BBC's Springwatch from 2008 until 2010. A number of human-made lakes are home to a range of wild birds, and provide stop-off points for many wintering ducks and geese.
 * The Sea Life Centre in Great Yarmouth is One of the biggest sea life centres in the country. The Great Yarmouth centre is home to a tropical shark display, one resident of which is Britain's biggest shark 'Nobby' the Nurse Shark. The same display, with its walk-through underwater tunnel, also features the wreckage of a World War II aircraft. The centre also includes over 50 native species including shrimps, starfish, sharks, stingrays and conger eels.
 * The Sea Life Sanctuary in Hunstanton is Norfolk's leading marine rescue centre and works both as a visitor attraction as well as a location for rescuing and rehabilitating sick and injured sea creatures found in the nearby Wash and North Sea. The attractions main features are similar to that of the Sea Life Centre in Great Yarmouth, albeit on a slightly smaller scale.

Theatres
The Pavilion Theatre (Cromer) is a 510-seater venue on the end of Cromer Pier, best known for hosting the 'end-of-the-pier' show, the Seaside Special. The theatre also presents comedy, music, dance, opera, musicals and community shows.

The Britannia Pier Theatre (Great Yarmouth) mainly hosts popular comedy acts such as the Chuckle Brothers and Jim Davidson. The theatre has 1,200 seats and is one of the largest in Norfolk.

The Theatre Royal in Norwich has been on its present site for nearly 250 years, the Act of Parliament in the tenth year of the reign of George II having been rescinded in 1761. The 1,300-seat theatre, the largest in the city, hosts a mix of national touring productions including musicals, dance, drama, family shows, stand-up comedians, opera and pop.

The Norwich Playhouse hosts theatre, comedy, music and other performing arts. It has a seating capacity of 300.

The Maddermarket Theatre in Norwich opened in 1921 and was the first permanent recreation of an Elizabethan theatre. The founder was Nugent Monck who had worked with William Poel. The theatre has a seating capacity of 312.

The Norwich Puppet Theatre was founded in 1979 by Ray and Joan DaSilva as a permanent base for their touring company and was first opened as a public venue in 1980, following the conversion of the medieval church of St. James in the heart of Norwich. Under subsequent artistic directors – Barry Smith and Luis Z. Boy – the theatre established its current pattern of operation. It is a nationally unique venue dedicated to puppetry, and currently houses a 185-seat raked auditorium, 50 seat Octagon Studio, workshops, an exhibition gallery, shop and licensed bar. It is the only theatre in the Eastern region with a year-round programme of family-centred entertainment.

The Garage studio theatre (Norwich) can seat up to 110 people in a range of different layouts. It can also be used for standing events and can accommodate up to 180 people.

The Platform Theatre (Norwich) is in the grounds of City College Norwich (CCN), and has a large stage with raked seating for an audience of around 200. The theatre plays host to performances by both student and professional companies.

The Sewell Barn Theatre (Norwich) is the smallest theatre in Norwich and has a seating capacity of 100. The auditorium features raked seating on three sides of an open acting space.

The Norwich Arts Centre (Norwich) theatre opened in 1977 in St. Benedict's Street, and has a capacity of 290.

The Princess Theatre (Hunstanton) stands overlooking the Wash and the green in the East Coast resort of Hunstanton. It is a 472-seat venue. Open all year round, the theatre plays host to a wide variety of shows from comedy to drama, celebrity shows to music for all tastes and children's productions. It has a six-week summer season plus an annual Christmas pantomime.

Sheringham Little Theatre has seating for 180. The theatre programmes a variety of plays, musicals and music, and also shows films.

The Gorleston Pavilion is an original Edwardian building with a seating capacity of 300, situated on the Norfolk coast. The theatre stages plays, pantomimes, musicals and concerts as well as a 26-week summer season.

Demography
According to estimates by the Office for National Statistics, the population of Norfolk in 2018 was 903,680, split almost evenly between males and females. Roughly 24.3% of the population was aged 65 or older, compared to 18.2% for the whole of England. Source:

From Norfolk

 * George VI, King/Emperor of the United Kingdom. Born and died on the Sandringham Estate.
 * Joseph Ames, naval commander. Born and lived in Great Yarmouth
 * Joseph Ames, bibliographer and antiquary. Born in Great Yarmouth
 * Hannah Amond, pop singer from Norwich.
 * Diana Athill, literary editor and author, South Norfolk and Ditchingham
 * Alexander Baker (Jesuit), missionary to India
 * Peter Bellamy, folk singer and musician, who was brought up in North Norfolk
 * Henry Blofeld, Cricket commentator
 * Henry Blogg, the UK's most decorated lifeboatman, who was from Cromer
 * Francis Blomefield, Anglican rector, early topographical historian of Norfolk
 * James Blunt, English acoustic folk rock singer-songwriter who was raised in Norfolk during his childhood
 * Boudica, scourge of the occupying Roman Army in first century Britain and queen of the Iceni, British tribe occupying an area slightly larger than modern Norfolk
 * Martin Brundle, former motor-racing driver and now a commentator was born in King's Lynn
 * Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, writer, born at Heydon
 * George Russell (racing driver), Formula 1 driver, born in Kings Lynn, and educated at Wisbech grammar school.
 * Dave Bussey, former BBC Radio 2 and current BBC Radio Lincolnshire presenter
 * Michael Carroll (29 March 1983–) lottery winner
 * Howard Carter, archaeologist who discovered Tutankhamun's tomb; his childhood was spent primarily in Swaffham
 * Edith Cavell, a nurse executed by the Germans for aiding the escape of prisoners in World War I
 * Sam Claflin, actor, grew up in Norwich and studied at Costessey High School
 * Sam Clemmett, actor, from Brundall known for starring in West End stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Haribo Tangfastics television advert and the BBC documentary Murder Games: The Life and Death of Breck Bednar where he played Breck Bednar the teen murdered by Lewis Daynes
 * Edward Coke, 17th-century jurist and author of the Petition of Right was born in Mileham and educated at Norwich School
 * Olivia Colman, actress, born and educated in Norfolk
 * Jamie Cutter, co-founder of Cutter & Buck, America's largest golf apparel providers, born in Norwich
 * Cathy Dennis, singer and songwriter, from Norwich
 * Diana, Princess of Wales, first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, was born and grew up in Park House near the Sandringham estate
 * Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer brother of Diana, Princess of Wales and maternal uncle to H.R.H. Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex
 * Anthony Duckworth-Chad, landowner and Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk
 * Sir James Dyson, inventor and entrepreneur, was born at Cromer, grew up at Holt and was educated at Gresham's School
 * Bill (1916–1986), Brian (1922–2009), Eric (1914–1993), Geoff (1918–2004), John (1937–), and Justin Edrich (1961–), cricketers
 * Nathan Fake, electronic dance music producer/DJ
 * Pablo Fanque, equestrian and popular Victorian circus proprietor, whose 1843 poster advertisement inspired The Beatles song, Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!, born in Norwich
 * Natasha and Ralph Firman, racing drivers, were both born and brought up in Norfolk and educated at Gresham's School
 * Caroline Flack, television presenter, who grew up in East Wretham and went to school in Watton
 * Margaret Fountaine, butterfly collector, was born in Norfolk, and her collection is housed in Norwich Castle Museum
 * Elizabeth Fry, prominent 19th century Quaker prison reformer pictured on the Bank of England £5 note, born and raised in Norwich
 * Stephen Fry, actor, comedian, writer, producer, director and author who was born in London and was brought up in the village of Booton near Reepham. He now has a second home near King's Lynn
 * Samuel Fuller, signed the Mayflower Compact
 * William Gooderham Sr. (29 August 1790 – 20 August 1881) was an English distiller, businessman, and banker. He was a founder of the Gooderham and Worts distillery in Toronto, Canada.
 * Claire Goose, actress who starred in Casualty, was raised in Norfolk
 * Ed Graham, drummer of Lowestoft band The Darkness, was born in Great Yarmouth
 * Sienna Guillory, actress, from north Norfolk, who was educated at Gresham's School
 * Sir Henry Rider Haggard, novelist, author of She, King Solomon's Mines, born Bradenham 1856 and lived after his marriage at Ditchingham
 * Lilias Rider Haggard, daughter of Henry Rider Haggard and author of books about Norfolk
 * Lauren Hemp, footballer for England, part of the squad that won the UEFA Women's Euro 2022, was born in North Walsham and played for Norwich City Women FC
 * Jake Humphrey, BBC presenter, spent most of his childhood in Norwich
 * Andy Hunt, footballer, grew up in Ashill.
 * Julian of Norwich, mediaeval mystic, born probably in Norwich in 1342; lived much of her life as a recluse in Norwich
 * Robert Kett, leader of Kett's Rebellion in East Anglia 1549, from Wymondham
 * R. W. Ketton-Cremer, Norfolk historian and former owner of Felbrigg Hall
 * Sid Kipper, Norfolk humourist, author, songwriter and singer
 * Myleene Klass, former Hear'Say singer, comes from Gorleston
 * Holly Lerski, singer and songwriter, former member of the band Angelou, grew up and resides in Norfolk
 * Henry Leslie, actor and playwright, born 1830 at Walsoken
 * Samuel Lincoln, ancestor of US President Abraham Lincoln
 * Matthew Macfadyen, actor who starred in Spooks, was born in Great Yarmouth
 * Kenneth McKee, surgeon who pioneered hip replacement surgery techniques, lived in Tacolneston
 * Danny Mills, footballer, born in Norwich
 * Sir John Mills, actor, born in North Elmham
 * R. H. Mottram, author and former Lord Mayor of Norwich
 * Horatio, Lord Nelson, Admiral and British hero who played a major role in the Battle of Trafalgar, born and schooled in Norfolk
 * Nimmo Twins, sketch comedy duo well known in Norfolk
 * King Olav V of Norway, born at Flitcham on the Sandringham estate
 * Beth Orton, singer-songwriter, was born in Dereham and raised in Norwich
 * Thomas Paine, philosopher, born in Thetford
 * Ronan Parke, Britain's Got Talent 2011 finalist and runner up
 * Margaret Paston, author of many of the Paston Letters, born 1423, lived at Gresham
 * Barry Pinches, snooker player who comes from Norwich
 * Matthew Pinsent, Olympic champion rower, was born in Holt
 * Prasutagus, 1st-century king of the Iceni, who occupied roughly the area which is now Norfolk
 * Philip Pullman, author, born in Norwich
 * Miranda Raison, actress, from north Norfolk, who was educated at Gresham's School
 * Anna Sewell, writer, author of Black Beauty, born at Great Yarmouth, lived part of her life at Old Catton near Norwich and buried at Lamas, near Buxton
 * Thomas Shadwell, playwright, satirist and Poet Laureate
 * Allan Smethurst, 'The Singing Postman' who sang songs in his Norfolk dialect, was from Sheringham
 * Hannah Spearritt, actress and former S Club 7 singer, who is from Gorleston
 * Roger Taylor, drummer of the rock band Queen was born in King's Lynn and spent the early part of his childhood in Norfolk
 * Adam Thoroughgood, colonial leader in Virginia, namer of New Norfolk County, which later became Norfolk, Virginia
 * Peter Trudgill, sociolinguist specialising in accents and dialects including his own native Norfolk dialect, was born and bred in Norwich
 * George Vancouver, born King's Lynn. Captain and explorer in the Royal Navy
 * Stella Vine, English artist, spent many of her early years in Norwich
 * Sir Robert Walpole, first Earl of Orford, regarded as the first British prime minister
 * Tim Westwood, rap DJ and Radio 1 presenter, grew up in and around Norwich
 * Parson Woodforde, 18th century clergyman and diarist
 * Nick Youngs (1959–) and his two sons, Ben (1989–) and Tom (1987–) were both raised close to the town of Aylsham on their father's farm Youngs is a former rugby union player for Leicester Tigers and England. Both sons went on to represent the national rugby union team.

Associated with Norfolk
The following people were not born or brought up in Norfolk but are long-term residents of Norfolk, are well known for living in Norfolk at some point in their lives, or have contributed in some significant way to the county.

 * Verily Anderson (1915–2010), writer, lived in North Norfolk
 * Stuart Ashen, comedian, animator, actor and online reviewer, born and lives in Norfolk
 * Julian Assange, Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer, Internet activist and editor in chief of WikiLeaks, lived since 16 December 2010 in Ellingham Hall, the mansion of Vaughan Smith, under house arrest whilst fighting extradition to Sweden, before relocating to Kent in December 2011
 * Peter Baker (1921–1966), British Conservative MP for South Norfolk
 * Mary Bristow (1781–1805), landscape gardener, owner of Quidenham Hall
 * Bill Bryson, writer, has lived in the county since 2003
 * Adam Buxton, comedian and one half of Adam and Joe, moved to Norfolk in 2008
 * Richard Condon (1937–1991), Theatre Royal, Norwich and Pavilion Theatre, Cromer Pier manager
 * Revd Richard Enraght (1837–1898), 19th century clergyman, religious controversialist, Rector of St Swithun, Bintree
 * Liza Goddard TV and stage actress, lives in the village of Syderstone
 * Trisha Goddard, TV personality, lives in Norwich and writes a column in the local newspaper the Eastern Daily Press
 * Roderick Gordon, writer of Tunnels series, lives in North Norfolk
 * Adriana Hunter, translator of French novels, lives in Norfolk
 * John Major, British Prime Minister from 1990 to 1997, has a holiday home in Weybourne
 * Alan Partridge, fictional tongue-in-cheek media personality portrayed by Steve Coogan. His feature film Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa was set, filmed and had its world premiere in Norwich in 2013
 * Pocahontas (c. 1596–1617), who lived at Heacham Hall for part of her life when she was married to John Rolfe
 * Martin Shaw, stage, television and film actor, is based in Norfolk
 * Delia Smith, cookery writer and major Norwich City Football Club shareholder
 * John Wilson (1943–2018), angler, writer and broadcaster

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Norfolk


text:
Talk:Baltic

Untitled
Remark from Michael Tinkler (in the recent changes page): relinking Baltic the adjective to Baltic the Sea. Sometimes it's better to relink than to write a stub for a 'most wanted'.

 * That's true, but in this case, the word Baltic has more than one meaning. The use Baltic for from or of the Baltic Sea should of course be linked to the article on the sea. However, the use of Baltic for the three countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) may not be directly clear, and other countries also border the sea.

I just clarified this Michael. sjc

 * Yep, sometimes it's an adjective. But since Wikipedia isnt' a dictionary do we need to have links for adjectival meanings of words? When I revised Amber I de-linked the phrases 'Baltic Amber' and 'Prussian Amber' (Prussian, by the way, was there because [Amber] is a scarcely edited 1911 or even 1880 job) and instead linked the occurrence of Baltic Sea further down the entry.  I suppose I don't MIND having entries that explain 'proper adjectives' (is that what they're called?  I should remember - I've taught enough intro language).  I can see Baltic Sea and Baltic States, but the list of countries that border the Baltic is on Baltic Sea already. --MichaelTinkler

I agree it's messy. But it does cover a lot of bases: if it was deemed to be crucial enough to need 13 or so links (to date), it's probably needed enough to get you from point A to point B somewhere else along the line. sjc

 * Ah, but at least 4 of those 'wanteds' really wanted Baltic Sea, and I gave it to them. If the rest of 'em want Baltic states, we could give 'em that.

I just knew you'd say that. Off you go then, quick as you can. PS Don't forget to catch all the future instances of Baltic as well :-) sjc

 * Well, that'll just give new folk a false sense of security, when they link Baltic *meaning* Baltic Sea or Baltic States and it works - and THEN we'll have to disambiguate them, because I don't think the software is up to the artificial intelligence job of a 'links that need disambiguating' page! MichaelTinkler

Fun, isn't it! But seriously, Michael, I wouldn't lose too much sleep about it. So long as everything points approximately in the right place it should be OK. Baltic points to Baltic States and Baltic Sea, so the disambiguation is managed at one slightly annoying remove. You and I have bigger problems in life, not the least of which being the perpetual and seemingly interminable Prussian situation... sjc

versus...
A popular mistake I have run into is people confusing "Balkan" and "Baltic". Would it be appropriate to make a note on the disambiguation page in this regard? I was just going to add the clarification but then thought I'd first solicit some editorial opinions. —PētersV (talk) 23:47, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Merge
This information is already a section on the 'Baltic' dab. Does anyone else think this is therefore unnecessary? Boleyn3 (talk) 20:32, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Requested move
Baltic → Baltic (disambiguation) — To allow "Baltic" to redirect to the obvious primary topic, Baltic Sea. The Sea is the intended target of most of the existing links to "Baltic" (hopefully all of them now, since I've just done a cleanup job on the others). Kotniski (talk) 14:43, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Baltic region and Baltic states, clearly share the top spot for Baltic, along with Baltic Sea. Baltic gets far fewer views than any of them, so I see no need to move it. Normally no links should point to a dis page, though I did find one that I could not figure out an obvious target, and left pointing to the dis page. 199.125.109.126 (talk) 17:28, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I wouldn't say that the sea is the obvious target. Baltic states is a close contender in any case. (I personally first thought of Baltic languages.) Jafeluv (talk) 20:04, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Per Jafeluv. Baltic can refer (most obviously) to land or sea or the region in general. Admittedly there is a parallel, if "Baltics" goes to the Baltic states, then "Baltic" could go to the Baltic sea. That said, however, I think "Baltic" as it stands now is the most useful organization, I don't see any pressing need to redirect and then have to rename the dab page. V ЄСRUМВА  ☎  02:54, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * But "Baltic" or "the Baltic" always refers to the sea. If you want to refer to the states or the languages, you say "the Baltic states" or "the Baltic languages" or some such phrase. We're talking about the primary usage of "Baltic" on its own, not about phrases containing Baltic. If Baltic is left as a dab page, then we're going to have to keep correcting the links that people make, assuming (hardly unreasonably) that Baltic points to an article about the sea.--Kotniski (talk) 07:02, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * For the record, I have no problem with The Baltic pointing to the sea article. Jafeluv (talk) 09:28, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

 * oppose there is no single clear contender for primacy imho. Abtract (talk) 09:14, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose. No clear primary topic - I imediately thought of the baltic states.  Page view stats (from ) for June (similar for April and May) also appear to back this up with 34446 for Baltic Sea and 21554 for Baltic states.  Yes there are more views for Baltic sea but in my opinion the difference is no where near learge enough for there to be a clear primary topic (I'd be looking for an absolute minimium of a ratio of 2:1). Dpmuk (talk) 09:26, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, although the page views don't really tell much about how many of the people who search for "Baltic" are looking for the sea and how many something else. Jafeluv (talk) 09:30, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I realise that but they're the next best thing we've got as we can't get figures on how many people actually clicked through. Obviously they need to be taken with a pinch of salt and their limitations considered - thanks for pointing that out. Dpmuk (talk) 10:08, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose - no obvious primary topic. 96.243.59.151 (talk) 00:18, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:Baltic