Why Chihiro's name become SEN in Spirited Away?

You might be confused why Chihiro's name becomes SEN in Spirited Away after she signs her contract and that apparently only one letter of her name remains. That's an easter egg that only people who can read Japanese can grasp! But thankfully I am here to decipher this mystery for you!

Chihiro’s name is as such:

荻野 – Ogi No -  Reed Field

千尋 – Chi Hiro –Thousand Fathom

Yubaba steals 3 of her kanji as part of the contract and only the kanji 千 remains on the paper.

Now you might ask: "Why does her name not become “Chi” then?"

This is where being fluent in Japanese becomes the key. Japanese kanji have 2 ways of reading: the ON yomi (from Chinese pronunciation) and the KUN Yomi (Japanese pronunciation). Yubaba decides to change the kanji reading of her name from the KUN Yomi (chi) to the ON Yomi (sen).

Another trivia about this scene is that it looks like Chihiro intentionally misspelled one kanji of her family name.

This is how Chihiro wrote her name on the contract:

But the correct kanji for OGI is  

The kanji radical highlighted is different on the image as it is 犬 (dog) instead of 火 (fire). The kanji she wrote does not even exist in the Japanese language.

You might now realize that actually because of this, her contract was never valid in the first place, and that maybe she is smarter than she looks!

Finally, you might not know it, but the Japanese name of the movie is not quite similar to “Spirited Away” only, instead it is”千と千尋の神隠し”: SEN and CHIHIRO’S Spirited Away, making the emphasis on both names.

This is why learning and knowing Japanese opens the door to such incredible details and makes the things you already love even more enjoyable!