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Yes, true! But from my experience Japan is a bit conservative and I read that many people try to use well known spellings and names (not all of course) to avoid confusion and trouble. But maybe that has changed in recent years.

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I feel like Japan is not super creative (yet). I used to live with and work regularly with people from Japan (they were usually a bit older than me, born in the 80s and early 90s) and I met so so many women named Ai, Momoko, Aya, Akane (but all with the "red" spelling) and some even had quite old fashioned names for their age group like Akiko, Yumiko, Fumiko, Yukiko. Kanako is also a name I saw a lot. So we would for example work with two Kanakos, three Ayas (at some point) etc. Still I love Japanese names and Aya is my favorite even though I met so many.

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I think the only somewhat uncommon name I encountered was Arisa. At the time I wasn't good at reading kanji so I can't remember how everyone spelled it, I only remember the spellings of the people I was somewhat close to (because I asked them). Hiragana was also used sometimes. But for Akiko I met "bright child" and "autumn child" but never any of the others and for Aya I only met "colours" so far.

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In any way the pronunciation should be listed so that no confusions occur because there are also some common name spellings with different pronunciations. It is confusing :P

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