Japanese Kanji: Names of People Page 1 of 4

Names of People

There are 150,000 to 200,000 family names in Japan. Before Meiji Restoration in
1886, common people such as farmers, merchants and workers were not allowed to
use family names. After the Meiji Restoration, common people freely choose their
family names.

There are several types of family names such as;

z Traditional names

z Names of Places

z Geographical names which use mountain, river, rice field and etc.

Most of Japanese family names use Kanji.

Popular 50 Family Names

(Based on Tokyo & Kanagawa lanking of "Myoji Hakase")

Kanji Pronunciation Meaning of Each Characters

Suzuki bell/tree

Satoh help/wisteria

Kobayashi small/forest

Tanaka rice field/center

Takahashi high/bridge

Watanabe cross/near

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Saitoh all/wisteria

Itoh ?/wisteria

Katoh add/wisteria

Nakamura center/village

Yamamoto mountain/origin

Yamada mountain/rice field

Sasaki help/help/tree

Yamaguchi mountain/mouth

Inoue well/on

Yoshida luck/rice field

Ishii stone/well

Kimura tree/village

Shimizu clear/water

Kaneko gold/child

Matsumoto pine/origin

Ishikawa stone/river

Abe ?/part

Hayashi forest

Mori forest

Ikeda pond/rice field

Hasegawa long/valley/river

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Aoki blue/tree

Endoh far/wisteria

Ogawa small/river

Yamazaki mountain/peninsular

Hashimoto bridge/origin

Nakashima center/island

Gotoh back/wisteria

Fujita wisteria/rice field

Kondoh near/wisteria

Yamashita mountain/under

Wada harmony/rice field

Uchida in/rice field

Miura three/bay

Okada hill/rice field

Nakayama center/mountain

Ono small/field

Ohta thick/rice field

Hara field

Kojima small/island

Yokoyama horizontal/mountain

Maeda front/rice field

Murakami village/up

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Fukuda happy/rice field

Font set of aKanji graphics; HG Hagoromo M.

http://www.harapan.co.jp/english/japan/kanji_familyname.htm 24.4.2003