(My apologies if this doesn’t belong in IMHO, but I wasn’t sure about where else it might go).
So, for a little literary work, I’ve written myself into a corner. I have a female japanese character who is ashamed of her name. She claims it’s like being called Myrtle or Gertrude in the United States… Something extremely outdated and unflattering-sounding. Can anyone give me a hand as to what a name of that ‘type’ would be in Japan?
Japanese women in their 30s-50s very, very commonly have a name ending with -ko (which means “child.”) Etsuko, Yukiko, Yoko, Noriko, Chikako, Yumiko, etc. I taught a conversation class, all women in their 40s-50s and every last one had a name ending with “ko.” On the other hand, almost none of my high school students had “-ko” names. There are a few -ko names that are still used for younger women (like Aiko who is a well known singer) but generally speaking, those names are pretty old fashioned. I’m not sure if you can compare it to Bertha, but that’s something to go on, at least!
ウメ (ume)
カメ (kame)
トラ (tora)
These can all be used for women, but if you heard them today you’d know for sure these women must be grandmothers/great grandmothers.
Isamu would Miyuki work? I’ve heard it used to be considered a male name but has sort of switched gender to female and is kind of outdated.
I don’t know about the historical usage of Miyuki, but even still I don’t think it’s outdated enough for the OP’s purposes. There are a few famous people from my generation (40s) and younger that have that name.
In any case, there’s an easy way to check, just do a google image search for the name and see what comes up. Miyuki or 美由紀.
For an interesting example in anime, in the high-school romance “Kimi ni Todoke”, there’s a conniving little bitch of a character named Kurumizawa Ume who freaks out when anybody calls her Ume because it’s such a little old lady’s name.
When I was in Japan I was an acquaintance of a family whose little daughter was Momoko-chan. I fell in love with her name, since momo=peach, so momoko=peach-child. I thought it was too cute!!!
Momoko is a fairly common name, especially for fictional characters because of the peach connection – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momoko – but I don’t think it’s particularly old-fashioned.