Engraving Names on Knives - Techniques to Personalize Your Knife

If the knife is a gift for someone we recommend getting the recipient's name engraved on it to enhance the gift experience, but if this is for yourself putting your own name on the knife allows you to have a much stronger connection to it. It turns your new item into something truly special for personal reasons, and not just because it cuts well, is Japanese or holds an edge for a long time. In Japan, we sometimes believe items have a "soul" and this personalization can increase that attachment.

A skilled craftsperson or engraver etches a name letter by letter using a chisel and a hammer. Since this is done by hand, it creates a unique appearance each time that machine engraving simply cannot replicate. Plus in our case, you can watch the engraver do it in real time!

An engraving is added to the blade using just two tools - a chisel, normally a metal rod with a sharper or pointed edge, and a small hammer.

In the world of kitchen knives, we refer to this as meikiri, as this involves cutting a name into the knife, rather than carving a name out.

Depending on the knife, there are sometimes certain places we can't put it. For example, with single-edged knives we can't put any engraving on the back of the knife (the concaved side with no edge.) But we'll always help you choose where it should go - and whether your name should be written horizontally or vertically, which depends normally on what script you're using between Roman or Japanese characters.

The angular chisel cuts through thanks to the the power of the hammer hitting it, making the font and characters appear extremely sharp and deep.

This has a different texture compared to writing with a ballpoint pen, and looks especially cool and traditional when done with kanji. That said, katakana still looks fantastic with hand-chisel engraving. You should be able to feel the engraving with your fingers if you trace over it.

We can translate your name from Roman characters into Japanese katakana script, or help you pick some kanji!

In recent years, more and more non-Japanese people have been buying Japanese kitchen knives. This may include you, as you're on our global website reading this article!

Naturally, this also means we see many more requests for names to be written in Roman characters, and sometimes cursively. Sadly, due to the nature of how chiselling works this is very difficult. Chiselling is designed for straight lines, and you need to force it with your other hand when trying to cause a curve, which creates jagged letters that don't always look good. A master engraver can get past this issue to some extent, but it won't be perfect. It is also easier to get done via hand-chiselling still if only capital or block letters are used. Of course, some block letters like "S" are difficult no matter what.

Additionally, many Western-style knives, especially stainless steel ones use an all-steel composition (read more about all-steel technique steel here!) tempered throughout, which can be too thin or brittle for engraving. Hand-chisel engraving may be possible on the bolster, but otherwise there is now also electric hand grinder engraving.

This even allows for cursive script to be written and is still done by hand.

Using an electric hand grinder allows for significantly more flexibility, due to the ability to easily add curves to the engraving.

There are some drawbacks to going with this style though. Firstly, it does not look the same as the traditional engraving you may seen on your knife. Additionally, it doesn't go nearly as deep as hand-chiselling, which makes the engraving visibly harder to notice. This is a very flexible engraving style, allowing you to have more options for cursive font on your knife.

We have recently started another form of engraving as well, which we refer to as letter stamping.

In this case, we have a series of Roman characters that all are pre-stenciled so when engraving your name on a knife it is nice and uniform.

Some people look for this when they want Roman characters that still penetrate deep into the knife, as you get the depth of hand-chiseling, with the capability of curves like the electric hand-grinder.

While this look lacks a traditional touch, it does leave a name or phrase that is very easy to read. As the letters are smaller as well, longer names or words can be used. As it is also still done by hand, you will get a little bit of variation with each seperate letter allowing for some uniqueness to still be visible on the blade. We do have larger sizes as well, if you want your name to stand out even more.

This allows for names with complex Roman characters to still be hand-engraved into a knife deeply. At this time, we only do this with Roman characters.

A variety of choices await you whenever you get a knife from us. Remember, engraving is always free - and quick! Our team does it in five to ten minutes per knife, and if you're in the store you're welcome to watch along or take photos and video.

We can translate your name into katakana, or if you have specific kanji you want to use we can do that too, or even assign some kanji to your name based on your name's pronouciation. We can also have some other syllabary requests, but this cannot always be met and we can't guarantee it will look perfect depending on the style you choose. We have examples of all styles in store we will show you also.

If you have questions, feel free to contact us concerning it and we are always available to help!