Japanese names are usually written in kanji, which are characters usually Chinese in origin but Japanese in pronunciation. Parents also have the option of using hiragana or katakana when giving a birth name to their newborn child. According to estimates, there are over 100,000 different surnames in use today in Japan.
About Japanese name in brief
Japanese names are usually written in kanji, which are characters usually Chinese in origin but Japanese in pronunciation. Parents also have the option of using hiragana or katakana when giving a birth name to their newborn child. According to estimates, there are over 100,000 different surnames in use today in Japan. The majority of Japanese people have one surname and one given name with no other names, except for the Japanese imperial family, whose members bear no surname. The family name – myōji, uji or sei – precedes the given name, called the ‘lower name’ or ‘myōji’ The three most common family names in Japan are Satō, Suzuki, and Takahashi. This diversity is in stark contrast to the situation in other nations of the East Asian cultural sphere, which reflects a different history. While Chinese surnames have been in use for millennia and were often reflective of an entire clan or adopted from nobles, the vast majority of modern Japanese family names date only to the 19th century, following the Meiji restoration. The recent introduction of surnames has two additional effects: Japanese names became widespread when the country had a very large population instead of dating to ancient times, and since little time has passed, Japanese names have not experienced as significant a surname extinction as has occurred in the much longer history in China. For example, Ishikawa means ‘river of the stones’, Yamamoto means ‘the base of the mountain’ and Inoue means ‘above the well’.
People with mixed Japanese and foreign parentage may have middle names. The lower form of the name sei was originally the patrilineal surname which is why up until now it has only been granted by the emperor of male rank of tei. There were relatively few sei and most of the medieval noble clans trace their lineage either directly to these sei or to the courtiers of these courtiers. Myōji was simply, what a family chooses to call itself as opposed to the sei, which was passed on on to the emperor. There was originally a male ancestor in ancient Japan called ‘Sei’ which is a common name in Japanese men, although there was also a female ancestor known as ‘Myo’ who came from a different line of aristocratic descent. For more information on the Japanese naming system, visit: www.japan-names.org.uk/nomenclature/names-and- surnames-in-the-main-of-Japan-by-name-and.html. For information on how to pronounce a given name in Japan, see: http://www.japans-names-online.org/nominations/given-name.html/. For information about how to pronounce a given-name in Japan in the UK, see www.nominational-naming.co.uk/. For. example, the popular masculine name Yamato is traditionally pronounced ‘Hiroto’ but in recent years alternative pronunciations ’Haruto’ has been used.
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This page is based on the article Japanese name published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
