The 10 most common surnames in Japan (and their meanings)

the 10 rarest would be much more interesting...

Where does the name Kato rank on the list? I wonder.

Interesting read.

A correction though:

Professional footballer Shunsuke Nakamura, who was the first Asian player to score a goal in the UEFA Champions League.

Nakamura was the first Japanese player to score in the UEFA Champions League, but 4th Asian player to achieve the feat. First Asian player was Ali Daei who scored a goal in 1999.

This is from his wikipedia page:

He is one of the most prominent and successful Asian players to have played in Scotland and on 13 September 2006 became the first Japanese player to score in the UEFA Champions League and the fourth Asian player after South Korean Park Ji-Sung, Uzbekistani Maksim Shatskikh and Iranian Ali Daei.

"There are an estimated 100,000 family names in Japan — much more than in many Western countries, and vastly more than in neighboring Korea and China"

I wonder if this is true about China if you take into account the many different Characters that can be read the same way. As far as Korea is concerned I believe it since everybody is either Kim or Pak with the occasion Li to throw everyone off.

@Ossan

It's true. China has remarkably few surnames given it's population. I worked at a university which employed seven Chinese lecturers. Five of those seven were called Wang (王).

"Ken Watanabe... Look out for him in the U.S. reboot movie Godzilla, too"

I sure hope it's better than the first U.S. version of Godzilla. That wasn't Godzilla.

Probie - Har! But aren't you being a little too hard on these guys?

"There are an estimated 100,000 family names in Japan — much more than in many Western countries, and vastly more than in neighboring Korea and China"

If you include variations, I've seen the number 250,000 flaunted about. A lot of surnames in olden times were ate-ji (phonetic usage characters) like 興梠木 (Korogi, with the second character written using the tree radical), which were standardized in the early Meiji period to 黒木 (Kuroki).

...saving elementary school kids blessed with the name the hassle of learning kanji characters that they otherwise wouldn’t meet for years.

Ha! Long ago, I had a class of kids, most of whom were from "大江町," so when I had them write where they were from, it was for them quite simple. One poor girl, though, was from 南千反畑町: she was always last to finish writing.

On the other hand, she is in medical school now.

It’s a little-known fact that until the Meiji era (1868-1912), the ordinary men and women of Japan did not have surnames.

... there are people who DON'T know this?? Well maybe its not common knowledge amongst foreigners, but it is certainly common knowledge amongst Japanese people.

interesting!!!

My favorite among the many rare Japanese surnames is probably Ninomae, written simply with the single character for the number one. A handful of families in Aichi prefecture, and that's apparently it.

I knew a Japanese guy whose surname only used 2 Chinese characters but when written in Romaji became "Tsutsumibayashi" which is 15 letter long! Foreigners found it difficult to pronounce his surname and called him Mr. TT. And it's not such an uncommon name.

Hmmm. I actually remember that thing about the lower classes not having a surname being mentioned in the TV serial "Shogun" which I watched a long time ago. (When Richard Chamberlains character is jailed along with the priest). I didn't give it much thought afterwards tho, as it seemed to me like it was more like the criminals were stripped of their family name.

How about Kojima? I wonder how common that surname is.

Imagine having the Japanese surname "Smallballs" （小玉）...

How about Kojima? I wonder how common that surname is.

If you're talking about the most common form of the name (小島), it's 86th on the list at 31,109 people...

http://tinyurl.com/llwg6kk

Maria, another source lists "Katoh" as No. 10. http://www.douseidoumei.net/00/sei01.html

kimuzukashiiiii-san, according to the same source, there are a stunning 41,835 surnames that are used by only one family each! It's a huge list, but there are some real odd ones in there. Unfortunately, they don't provide the pronunciations, and since they're so rare, the only way to find out for would be to ask someone who has the name! http://www.douseidoumei.net/00/sei14.html I'm proud to say that my own wife's surname is used by only two families in the entire country, and is listed 49,38? nationally. I don't want to give the final digit, because it would be pretty easy to find her if I did! Whether you consider it a blessing or a curse to be easily found with Google depends on your disposition and who's searching for you, amirite?

I remember reading somewhere previously that the top 20 Japanese surnames account for over 50% of all surnames in Japan, although this is not backed by the above numbers. I wonder whether this is a misprint and it is actually giving the number of households with each name. I find it hard to believe that there are on 2m Sato's in Japan - less than 2. I am sure that when I was teaching in class there was at least one a class, not 1 or 2 in a year!

The other thing which is a remarkable cultural change post-Edo is how Japanese have gone from not having surnames to using them almost exclusively in public.

Thank you for this fantastic article. This is really good to know and a great thing to study when learning kanji names. I do admit, however, when I saw Kobayashi, competitive eating wasn't my first thought. Kobayashi Maru. May you live long and prosper!

I think someone once tweeted that 99% of Japanese surnames contain either a SA/SHI/SU/SE/SO or a dakuon (ZA/ZI/ZU/ZE/ZO&BA/BI/BU/BE/BO). Try it for yourself. 99% is too high, maybe 80%? but I have no idea why this is so common.

I just looked up the most common U.S. Surnames. The most common is Smith, at 2.5 million, the 10th most common is Taylor at 773,000. Interestingly enough... "Garcia" is the 18th most common surname in the USA at 631,000, and Martinez is 19th at 581,000. A lot of change in the U.S. over the last 30 years... I wonder how much Japan has.

I read somewhere that Japan has 125,000 different family names, China 25,000 and Korea just 5,000 but it's easy to remember i.e. China has 5 times more family names than Korea and Japan has 5 times more than China apparently.

I know a few of these surnames, but from other sources. Nakamura for example I know from the anime Angel Beats! being the surname of female protagonist Yuri. Sato I know from Torchwood; Toshiko Sato (Toshiko I believe means Clever Child. Appropriate in her case). I believe Tanaka appeared in the Bond movie You Only Live Twice. I quite like Japanese Surnames in comparison to Western surnames, as they have meanings. Mine doesn't mean anything. It's just a name. Some Western names stem from a family's trade (so if your surname was Smith, you most likely descended from a Blacksmith, or Cooper for someone descended from a Cooper (Google it), or Fisher for...well you get the idea). Not as interesting as Akamatsu (Red Pine), Kuroki (Black Tree) or Shimizu (Which I'm led to believe means Pure Water).

I once met a young Japanese woman whose family name was Kuriki. Very rare, apparently. Sorry, I don’t know the kanji, however.

Have to be careful reading too much into the exact choice of kanji characters for a surname. Suzuki for example only comes out as "bell tree" by accident. Originally, it was the clan name of a ruling family called Hozumi. Its historical connections with the shrine warden at Kumano shrine in Wakayama also reveal its religious roots. Hozumi literally means "stacked sheaves of rice." Farmers placed a wooden pole in the middle of the sheave maybe for stability, but also to allow the "kami" to descend and bestow blessings/spiritual energy to the rice. This wooden pole was called "sei naru ki" (the sacred beam") which, with regional accents, came to be pronounced Suzuki instead of sei naru ki. Most people use the "bell tree" kanji these days, but other families actually do use other kanji characters. Needless to say, surnames are often from clan names and therefore have ancient roots with lots of detail to each story of origin. [[Dear moderator, I tried to add the kanji like 穂積 and 鈴木 but they came out garbled in the preview]]

Very interesting!

There are also names that sound the same but are written differently using older style kanji. For example, the noble families of daimyo might use the old characters while their subordinates or bunke use more modern kanji. The differences are subtle and often times are wrongly corrected by those who don't know of the older, traditional characters.

Wasabizuki, Samurai descendents nobles, used their family name. Only commoners had to create or copy commoners names. Daimyio families such as Hosokawa, Mouri, Shimazu and others never used different kanjis for generations, including Sengoku eras. The same with samurais, . Often, people can figure what kind of ancestors you have. By the time Meiji Govt modernized, Samurais were book worm administrators. No good in martial arts but knew theor.ies. When you enter to schools, Koseki shouhons are given to schools. There, rumors apread that sone so-so is Shizoku so dson;t argue, don;;t fight. Commoner boys stay away to insult shizoku girsl creating big mlouth brats who carry 30 cm. rulers to pretend they can use that like =sword.

I wonder where the surname Shigata. I wondered where this surname originated from as I have a Japanese friend with this surname.

is "Detoyato" is also a Japanese family name?

yes, "Detoyato" is also a Japanese family name. I agree with you my friend