#saboten

Let's start with the MC:

Sakura (桜) means Cherry Blossom.

(Sakura Kinomoto from Cardcaptor Sakura also uses the kanji for Sakura in her name and both are born April 1).

The Nire (楡) in Nirei means Ulmus davidiana var. japonica, commonly known as the Japanese Elm.

Suo is an interesting case. Instead of having one syllable in his name being a word for a plant, both of the syllables in his name make up one word for the plant he's named after. In his case, Suo (蘇枋) means Biancaea sappan. The sappan plant can be used as dye, called Sappanwood, and the color is a reddish brown just like Suo's hair color. The color is actually called Suo in Japanese, which is actually really creative on the author's part.

The Sugi in Sugishita (杉) is the Japanese word for Cryptomeria japonica, commonly known as the Japanese cedar.

The Ume in Umemiya means plum (梅)

Hiiragi (柊) is the word for Osmanthus heterophyllus, which is commonly known as either holly osmanthus, holly olive or false holly.

For Bofurin's affiliates, they also have plant names too.

Kotoha's surname is Tachibana (橘), which means mandarin (as in the orange). This sort of goes along with her foster brother Umemiya who is also named after a fruit.

Sasaki, the middle school kid Bofurin saved from Shishitoren, is quite an interesting case. Sasaki is a common surname, but the way his name is spelled is actually a bit different from the more commonly way Sasaki is spelled. In Sasaki's case, the sasa in his name means bamboo (笹).

Not only are the people named after plants, but the shops too!

The cafe Sakura frequents and the one where Kotoha works is called Pothos, which is a plant.

The bakery that Sakura gets his bread from is called Saboten, which is the Japanese word for Cactus.

As a writer, the creativity behind the plant theme names really gets to me. I can tell the author put a lot of thought into their names and have them be consistent with a certain theme.

However, Bofurin itself means wind chime which doesn't really fit the plant theme, but it is powered up by the wind, which is a part of nature, which plants are from. I guess that counts?

Anyways, if you enjoyed reading this post, I'll be back with a part 2 once more Bofurin members are introduced.

Here's a video I made for this trivia.