1- Like many collectivistic cultures and Asian countries, In Japan, family names come first before the given name.
2- Usually there are no middle names in Japanese
3- When witing in latin alphabet (Romaji) the Japanese write given name first.
4- Most Japanese last names are derived from nature such as river (kawa), mountain (moto), yama (hill).
5- Top 20 Japanese names represent almost 17% of the total Japanese population.
5- According to John Power’s study, the top 10 Japanese names are
1. Sato (nearly two million) (meaning ‘helping wisteria’) 佐藤 2. Suzuki (‘bell-flower tree’) 鈴木 3. Takahashi (‘high bridge’) 高橋 4. Tanaka (‘in rice field’) 田中 5. Watanabe (literally, ‘crossing edge’, but probably originally meaning ‘ferryman’) 渡辺 6. Ito (‘that wisteria’) 伊藤 7. Yamamoto (‘mountain base’) 山本 8. Nakamura (‘in village’) 中村 9. Kobayashi (‘small grove’) 小林 10. Saito (‘Buddhist food’/‘wisteria’) 斉 7- Top 20 Japanese Names are 11. Kato 12. Yoshida 13. Yamada 14. Sasaki 15. Yamaguchi 16. Matsumoto 17. Inoue 18. Kimura 19. Hayashi 20. Shimizu 8-Common suffixes for boys’ and girls’ names Boys Girls -o -ko -ro -e -to -yo -hiko -ka -suke -mi -ta -shi 9- According to Lauderdale and Kestenbaum (2000) Top 50 Japanese names are Japanese 1. Suzuki 2. Sato 3. Tanaka 4. Takahashi 5. Watanabe 6. Nakamura 7. Yamamoto 8. Kobayashi 9. Ito 10. Saito 11. Yamada 12. Yoshida 13. Kato 14. Kimura 15. Matsumoto 16. Hayashi 17. Sasaki 18. Yamaguchi 19. Mori 20. Shimizu 21. Abe 22. Ikeda 23. Inoue 24. Hashimoto 25. Ogawa 26. Ono 27. Ishikawa 28. Okada 29. Sakamoto 30. Maeda 31. Murakami 32. Ishii 33. Yamashita 34. Nishimura 35. Kondo 36. Fujita 37. Nakagawa 38. Sakai 39. Nakajima 40. Hasegawa 41. Harada 42. Takeuchi 43. Fujii 44. Aoki 45. Matsuda 46. Okamoto 47. Goto 48. Tamura 49. Arai 50. Takeda Source: Japanese Names by John Power. The Indexer Vol. 26 No 2 June 2008 Asian American ethnic identification by surname by DIANE S. LAUDERDALE & BERT KESTENBAUM. Population Research and Policy Review 19: 283–300, 2000 Japanese lessons for kids
