Yes,
Maren and
Karen actually are used in Japan as girl's names, but
Karen is far more common than
Maren. They are pronounced mah-ren and kah-ren, with the ah of "father."
About meanings, if a Japanese name consists of two characters and one means "lotus," then the definition becomes "lotus" + whatever the other character means. The lotus meaning does not disappear.
However, there is more than one kanji (Chinese character) which is pronounced
Ren, so not every name with that syllable will have anything to do with a lotus. I would be interested to see the combinations and definitions this individual provided.
There are far too many potential ways to write
Karen and
Maren in Japanese to list them all, but here are some examples that DO include the lotus meaning. You can see that the second character is the same in all.
Karen 香蓮 "fragrant lotus"
Karen 風蓮 "lotus wind"
Karen 花蓮 "lotus flower"
Maren 真蓮 "true lotus"
And here are some that do NOT:
Karen 香暖 "warm fragrance"
Karen 夏恋 "summer love"
Karen 佳麗 "goodness and beauty"
Maren 真恋 "truth and love"
It is also correct that
Ren can be either be used as a name on its own, or combined with various other syllables. As I mentioned, the most common in Japan is
Karen (which no doubt is due to its also being a borrowed English names). Others that are fairly common are Aren,
Eren, Saren, Sharen,
Seren, and
Miren, as well as Renka, Renko, Renna, Renri.
Again I want to emphasize that none of these names necessarily includes the "lotus" meaning. They might, or might not. It depends entirely on which characters the parents chose to write the name.
I hope this helps.
This message was edited 5/11/2014, 12:55 PM