A Japanese-style given name/spelling also used as a Japanese form of Andre/Anri, commonly unisex.
Anri is a name that has traveled far from its Germanic origins, arriving in both French and Japanese cultures with its own distinct identity in each. At its root is the Old High German *Heimrich*, composed of *heim* (home) and *ric* (power, ruler) — "ruler of the home" or "lord of the estate" — which became Heinrich in German, Henri in French, and Henry in English. Anri is the Japanese phonetic rendering of the French Henri, borrowed as part of Japan's enthusiastic adoption of Western given names and aesthetics during and after the Meiji era (1868–1912).
In Japanese contexts it is written in katakana as アンリ and occasionally given to both boys and girls. The most celebrated bearer of the name in Japan is Anri (born 1961), the iconic pop singer whose 1980s city-pop recordings — crystalline, sophisticated, and unmistakably Japanese in their nostalgia — made her a defining figure of the era. Her international-sounding name was part of a deliberate artistic identity that drew on cosmopolitan glamour, and her music's revival in the 2010s streaming era introduced Anri to new global audiences.
In France and French-speaking cultures, Anri is simply an alternative orthographic form of Henri, occasionally chosen for its slight exoticism within the French-speaking world. As a given name for children today, Anri appeals across cultural contexts: in Japan it carries the warmth of city-pop nostalgia and a graceful blend of East and West; in the Francophone world it offers a clean, minimalist form of a classical name; and in the global diaspora it functions as a name that moves between languages without losing itself in any of them — compact, melodic, and culturally multilayered.