Family names in Japan
Names in Japanese are quite different from what we’re usually used to in the West. Right off the bat, the family and given names are reversed, so if you’re going to talk about “kawaii” bikini idol Yuko Ogura in Japanese, you’d need to get used to calling her Ogura Yuko.
There are no middle names in Japan, and over the years I’ve been asked quite a lot by my students about my own middle name (Rowland), which they find interesting. Japanese also never name sons after fathers, as my own father did with me, and part of the mystique of the famous thief Lupin III is that he’s the third generation to hold that name despite being of mixed Japanese ancestry.
In the States, expectant mothers will buy a book of baby names that contains information on the etymology of each (for example, my own name comes from the Greek word for ‘rock’), and books which present various kanji names are popular in Japan, too.
It’s common for Japanese to consult their local Shinto shrine for advice when choosing a name, but my wife’s family is a little more Buddhist than most, so we visited our family Buddhist temple instead. We had been all set to name our son Kazuma, written with the characters for “peace” and “horse,” but the priest warned us that choosing animal names was a bad idea, as our son would be headstrong and never listen to us.
It can be fun to study how Japanese surnames work. One of the mysteries of family names in Japan is the large number of different ones that exist, around 120,000, compared with a few thousand in China and only 249 in Korea. This is caused partially by how late Japan was in adopting universal surnames, which only became required in 1870, and a lack of a specific tradition of naming families up to that point.
It’d be hard to imagine a neighborhood in the States where everyone was named Smith, but nearly everyone who lives around our house has the same last name as us, Yanai, and nearby there are patches of houses where everyone is named Hosoi or Ishida, yet no one is related to anyone around them. Part of this is due to the fact that we live in a small rural city in the exact center of the country where no one ever sells their land, because if you sold your land and moved to another part of the country, what would you do with your family gravestone? Your ancestors would be so lonely.
One amusing aspect of living in Japan is hearing people with names like Tanaka (”in the rice field”), Yamada (”rice field on the mountain”) and Nakamura (”in the village”) argue vehemently that their ancesors were samurai warriors despite their agrarian sounding names.
You must live in a *really* inaka place. I’ve been to a few like that, in for example the remoter areas of Yamagata.
The “agricultural name” and samurai thing isn’t odd at all - many famous samurai families have had ‘peasant’ names. The Maeda (front field) of Kaga come to mind - the richest daimyo in Japan after the Shogun, whom you may remember from the “Toshiie and Matsu” NHK Great River Drama. There’s Oda (roughly, woven field) of Oda Nobunaga fame as well of course. Ishida (stone-field) Mitsunari, the leader of the Osaka army in Sekigahara, and so on. In Oda’s case at least, the name was derived from a placename from the area his ancestors lived in - shrine priests in the Oda Estate in Echizen (Fukui). There was a Tanaka family that was granted a 320,000-koku estate near Fukuoka after Sekigahara, for example.
In general, most samurai family names came from the Heian period when the bushi were sent to pacify and rule Japan - the estates and so forth - and took their names based on the placename. In fact the Japanese word for surname, myouji, is written 名字, and the first character, myou, refers to the ‘myou’ or ‘myouden’ (名田), the basic unit of tax assessment measurement for the shouen estates in the Heian period. Even noble families tended to take their names from their birthplace, save in the very very oldest names, among which we find ancient court ranks and suchlike as name (Abe, for example, dates from the time of the Emperor Keikou, 19 centuries ago). Other ancient names like Omi, however, have basically become extinct. There were also four names for families that could provide high ministers in the Heian: 源平藤橘, or the Minamoto, the Taira, the Fujiwara, and the Tachibana.
In fact, far from such ‘field’ etc names as Tanaka or Tamura being unusual, it’s remarkably hard to come up with any decent list of totally UN-nature-related surnames. Yanai, if written 柳井, is willow-well, for example.
At any rate, I would never assume based just on a surname that someone was or was not of samurai descent.
July 4th, 2007 at 1:05 amThe “agricultural name” and samurai thing isn’t odd at all
I was about to post a one-liner along that line but you beat me with your longer (and better) post
Maybe I’m more knowledgeable than some think ahaha
July 4th, 2007 at 7:23 am[...] it is still popular to claim that we used to be vikings. Guess it is the same here in Japan. Japundit has got an interesting piece on Japanese names: One amusing aspect of living in Japan is hearing [...]
July 4th, 2007 at 11:10 amI was so surprised at how great your explanations are. When I talk to foreigners about our first names, I had to say first of all having a first name had not been allowed to the farmers who had a majority of the Japanese of Edo era till recently as you pointed out. So most of us would be unable to go back our family history before 1870 and to show who is our ancestor correctly.
But I have one thing to add yours. When we decide our children’s names, we sometimes use another way, the stroke counts of each Kanji of their names, to judge which name is better or not. Let me give you an example, using the rather popular last name “和馬” you mentioned. When you write the Kanji “和”, you do with 8 strokes of your pen, while “馬” with 10 storokes. So you can find the name “和馬” has 18 storokes and this name is a somehow good name because 18 is a rather lucky number which is the double of 9, the greatest number of odd numbers). We see other sums of each Kanjis of the name because each sum is supposed to have the peculiar meaning of various aspects of our lives.
July 4th, 2007 at 10:35 pmAnd of course what itobun means here by “first name” is what in English we refer to as “last name.” What to do in Japan? Write your own name in Japanese order and you get Japanese thinking it’s in Western order. Write in Western and you get the reverse issue.
However do not despair about genealogy - all families were required by law to register with the local temple in the Edo period, so local temple records should have (ideally) all family histories.
July 5th, 2007 at 2:47 amJP and The Overthinker — thank you for wonderful posts!
And yes, I can attest that the family registers go back to at least the Edo period. We had to dig up Edo period family records after my father-in-law died to prove there weren’t any other heirs to…the land, I think. He was born toward the end of Meiji, and we had to go back one generation from him for some reason…his dad was born at the end of the Edo period! Needless to say my husband never met his grandfather who died looooooong before he was born.
My mother-in-law can trace her family back to the 1500s. Don’t know how authentic this is.
July 5th, 2007 at 1:23 pmThis post was accidentally put up with my name on it.
Actually it was written by Peter Payne.
Sorry for the mix up.
JP
July 5th, 2007 at 2:28 pmmy mother-in-law can probably trace her ancestry back several million years Pat - if you get my point.
July 5th, 2007 at 2:39 pmHahahaha~ ~ Come to think of it, so can mine!
July 5th, 2007 at 7:42 pmHere’s your starter for ten dollars.
“This guy doesn’t have any kind of last name or family name but you can trace his family back to B.C.660 completely. Who is this?”
July 6th, 2007 at 6:50 amJimmu?..Japan’s equivalent of King Arthur or Merlin or something mythical like that.
July 6th, 2007 at 7:22 amHmmm. Sakana-kun?
July 6th, 2007 at 7:25 amI’m looking for a girl whose name is “Anaruko”
July 6th, 2007 at 7:28 amThis article is interesting. It made me think how the life in Japan before 1970 was like. In Edo period Japan was a complete feudal society with 士農工商(social classes classified into 1st Samurai, 2nd Farmer, 3rd Craftsman, 4th Tradesman). I suppose there wasn’t a kind of freedom in today’s sense.
And just after 40 years Japan came up with slogan 富国強兵(rich nation with strong military). Japan happened to beat Russia was an unfortunate turning point.
July 6th, 2007 at 5:49 pmitobun is thinking of Akihito, but to trace him back to Jinmu is like tracing Queen Elizabeth back to King Arthur. In fact I have books that trace the line back to the Sun Goddess Amaterasu Oomikami, his great-great-great (however many times) grandmother. Only of course the line isn’t direct anyway.
The Imperial Family are not technically Japanese citizens: they have no ‘koseki’ family register….
July 6th, 2007 at 6:23 pmCongrats! You’ve got the 10, Mr.Overthinker haha. Thank you for the corrections for me.
Point taken, Mr.TofuUnion. The First Anglo-Chinese War warned us to change not to be colonized by westerners, I think.
July 7th, 2007 at 1:38 am