983 jinmeiyō kanji is it necessary?

[darcy69]

uhhmm i've been learning my kanji for the past 8 months and im on a 1500 kanji memorized that's why i can read now...

but when I searched the net...
there's another 983 kanji...
im not yet done on the 2000 but there's still more..
do i really have to learn that? 983 jinmeiyō kanji

[amost]

hmmm... I'd stick to jouyou kanji.

[Javizy]

Learning the kanji for names is still unlikely to help you read them, they're a bit of a nightmare area. If you want to learn additional kanji, I'd learn ones that are pretty commonly used but aren't included in the jouyou set, like 喋, 誰,俺, etc. A lot of these ones are going to be included in the revised jouyou set next year I believe. Learn from the list or as you see them. There are words like 曖昧 and 斡旋 that are always written in kanji, despite not being jouyou.

[taikutsu]

Many of these aren't necessary to learn, but there are kanji outside of the current Joyo set which I've seen in use, for example, 頃 rather than ころ and 爪 rather than つめ. I think you can just learn these as you encounter them, though. They are essentially an extended set of Kanji which can be used in personal names, so parents can give their children names like 巴(ともえ), 美奈子(みなこ) and 直之(なおゆき).

[jbraswell]

Yeah, I agree with Javizy and taikutsu, there are at least a couple of hundred important kanji outside of the jouyou/jinmeiyou set. Get those first.

The most common names don't even use much weird kanji, it seems, although they might use unusual pronunciations. (They are various lists on the internet of Japanese names arranged by frequency.)

The additional jinmeiyou kanji are probably most useful for *place* names, like smaller cities, temples, regions, etc.

Heck, for most practical purposes, I'd put "menu" kanji and vocab above the weird jinmeiyou kanji in importance. Your friends will wonder why you can't tell them what 鶉、鮫、 or 鯣 is, even though you *supposedly* study Japanese.