Her Name

The meaning of Rin's name.

According to the notes included in various volumes of the Fruits Basket manga, Takaya Natsuki derived the names of the major characters from the names of the twelve months in the calendar year. Specifically, she used the ancient Japanese poetic names. While I can't find any accurate source outside the manga to verify this, I trust that Takaya-san knows what she's doing and the information is accurate.

Rin's name, Isuzu, is taken from "Isuzukuretsuki," the poetic name for the sixth month of the year. It approximately translates into "month of the last cool spring days."

As for Isuzu's actual name, in kanji it is made up of two separate characters: 依鈴. 依 ("i") translates to "reliant on" and 鈴 ("suzu") translates to "bell."

Interestingly enough, only Hatsuharu, Yuki, Shigure and Hiro refer to Isuzu as "Rin." In Japanese, りん ("rin") is the sound effect for a bell ringing, be it a bicycle bell or telephone bell. It'd seem as if it's a pun on the fact that the second character of her name represents "bell."