The Utsunomiya District Court on Thursday sentenced a 54-year-old man to 14 years in prison for killing his father because he disliked the name his father gave him.
Kaname Yoshida, a tiler from Tochigi Prefecture, was found guilty of stabbing his 78-year-old father, Chuichi, in September due to a long-standing row over his name.
"The crime committed by the accused, who was possessed by the idea that the name had messed up his life, is horribly self-centered," said presiding Judge Kenichi Hiruma.
According to the ruling, Yoshida was embarrassed by his original given name, Kanae, because it sounded like a girl's name. By the time he left junior high school, he hated it because the Chinese character for the name was difficult and did not appear in the dictionary.
At the age of 30, he changed his name to Kaname, which has an easier Chinese character.
Yoshida, who later ran up large debts, believed that his given name was the cause of his misfortune, leading him to plot to murder his father.