Japanese surname

Japanese names (日本人の氏名, Nihonjin no Shimei^?) in modern times usually consist of a family name (surname), followed by a given name. More than one given name is not generally used. Japanese names are usually written in kanji, which are characters usually Chinese in origin but Japanese in pronunciation. The kanji for a name may have a variety of possible Japanese pronunciations, but parents might use hiragana or katakana when giving a birth name to their newborn child. Names written in hiragana or katakana are phonetic renderings, and so lack the visual meaning of names expressed in the logographic kanji.

Japanese family names are extremely varied: according to estimates, there are over 100,000 different surnames in use today in Japan. The three most common family names in Japan are Satō (佐藤), Suzuki (鈴木), and Takahashi (高橋). 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 (with or without any genetic relationship) and were thence transferred to Korea and Vietnam via noble names, the vast majority of modern Japanese family names date only to the 19th century, following the Meiji restoration, and were chosen at will. The recent introduction of surnames has two additional effects: Japanese names became widespread when the country had a very large population (over 30 million during the early Meiji era – see Demographics of Imperial Japan) instead of dating to ancient times (estimated population at 1 CE is 300,000, for instance – see Demographics of Japan before Meiji Restoration), 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.

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