Japanese Last Names: The 50 Most Common, With Kanji and Meanings

Japanese last names: Satō, Suzuki, Takahashi

The most common Japanese last names are Satō (佐藤), Suzuki (鈴木) and Takahashi (高橋), followed by Tanaka (田中), Watanabe (渡辺) and Itō (伊藤), according to Meiji Yasuda Life's national surname survey of 2008. Most Japanese surnames are two kanji long, come before the given name, and are built from everyday words for places, landscape and position, such as 田 (rice field), 山 (mountain) and 中 (middle).

The Japanese word for a last name is 名字 (みょうじ, myōji, “surname”). You'll also see it written 苗字, with the same reading. A more formal word for it, often seen on forms, is 姓 (せい, sei).

A few quick facts before the list:

• The family name comes first. In 山田太郎 (Yamada Tarō), Japan's "John Smith" example name, Yamada is the surname and Tarō the given name.
• Most surnames are two kanji. Some common ones have one kanji (林, 森), and a few have three characters (佐々木, 長谷川).
• There are a lot of them. Estimates run from about 100,000 to over 300,000 different surnames, depending on how you count spelling variants.
• A few names cover many people. The top 10 surnames cover about 10% of the population, and the top 100 slightly more than a third.

Every surname here is written in kanji, and each has a reading in kana. 佐藤, for example, is read さとう: さ, と, う. If kanji are new to you, start with What Is Kanji?.

The 50 most common Japanese last names

The ranking below is Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance's national same-surname survey. It was based on about 6,118,000 of the company's customers in August 2008, and the numbers are its nationwide estimates, as listed on Wikipedia. It dates from 2008, so treat the order lower down as approximate: other surveys may rank the middle of the list differently. At the top, Satō still leads: in March 2023, about 2 million people had the name, about 1.5% of the population.

Tap any kanji to see its readings and stroke order. The readings are from the names dictionary JMnedict, in hiragana. The meanings column gives the dictionary meanings of each kanji (from KANJIDIC, with "base" for 本 from JMdict), not the story of a family.

A few notes on the list:

• Saitō appears twice. 斉藤 and 斎藤 are both read さいとう, and the survey counts them separately. The two "sai" kanji differ: one means "alike, equal", the other "purification".
• Some names have a second reading. The names dictionary JMnedict lists 山崎 as やまざき and やまさき, and 中島 as なかじま and なかしま, all as surnames. The family decides.
• Fujiwara (藤原) is just outside the 50. It ranked 56th, with about 270,000 people.
• Romaji varies. We write long vowels with a macron (Satō). In English you'll also see Sato, Satou and Satoh for the same name.

What Japanese surnames mean: the kanji they're built from

The top 50 use only 53 different kanji, and a handful of them do most of the work. 45 of the 50 names contain at least one kanji from the table below. Learn these and you'll recognise part of almost every name on the list.

Add a few kanji of position and you have most of the rest: 中 (middle), 上 (above), 下 (below), 前 (in front), 西 (west) and 内 (inside). Read literally, 山下 is "below the mountain", 井上 is "above the well" and 前田 is "the rice field in front".

Some kanji have more than one everyday meaning, and the name makes more sense with the right one. 口 is usually "mouth", but the same word, 口 (くち, kuchi, “gate”), also means a gate or entrance. So 山口 can be read literally as "mountain entrance" rather than "mountain mouth".

The sounds change in the middle

Look at the readings and you'll see the second kanji often starts with a softer, voiced sound. 田 is た on its own, but だ in 山田 and 吉田. 川 is かわ, but がわ in 小川 and 長谷川. 林 becomes ばやし in 小林. This sound change is called 連濁 (れんだく, rendaku), which the dictionary also calls "sequential voicing". It often happens in Japanese compound words, but not always: 田中 keeps its た, and 中田 can be read Nakata or Nakada.

The first kanji can change too. 小 is こ in 小林 (Kobayashi) but お in 小川 (Ogawa). Both are among its dictionary readings.

Many are everyday kanji

20 of the 53 kanji in the top 50 are taught in the first year of primary school in Japan: 山, 田, 中, 村, 木, 林, 森, 川, 小, 石, 上, 下, 本, 竹, 青, 金, 子, 三, 口 and 水. You can practise the first-grade kanji in a quiz, or browse them all on the kanji pages.

Some surnames are ordinary words

A few surnames are also words you'll find in any dictionary:

• 清水 (しみず, shimizu, “spring water”) is also the 18th most common surname.
• 小川 (おがわ, ogawa, “stream”) is the 30th.
• 中島 (なかじま, nakajima, “island in a pond or river”) is the 23rd.
• 林 ("grove") and 森 ("forest") are surnames on their own, with one kanji each.
• 山口 (やまぐち, yamaguchi, “Yamaguchi (city, prefecture)”) is also the 14th most common surname.

Some kanji are there for the place or the sound

Not every kanji in a name tells you much. The dictionary glosses 伊 as "Italy; that one", and 阿 with meanings such as "Africa", "flatter" and "corner". Neither says anything useful about a family called 伊藤 or 阿部: in names like these, a kanji may stand for a place or simply a sound. So read the meanings column above as a reading aid, not as what the family once was.

Why so many Japanese surnames come from places

Wikipedia sums it up: Japanese family names usually include characters for places and geographic features. Japanese Wikipedia, citing a book by the surname researchers 高澤等 and 森岡浩 (Hiroshi Morioka), sorts their origins into groups:

The place-name group is the big one. The Japanese for a place name is 地名 (ちめい, chimei, “place name”).

How it happened

The habit started with the nobility. In the Heian period (794 to 1185), nobles came to be known by the place where they lived. From the late Heian period, warrior families took the name of their land as their surname. In the Kamakura period (from 1185), land was often divided among heirs, so a son who inherited a different estate took that estate's name, and the number of surnames grew.

Japanese Wikipedia also gives a reason for the sheer number: Japanese families put the household first, so separate branches of a family took different names to mark their own house. By comparison, the same article puts the number of Korean surnames at about 280.

Watanabe: a port, not a job

渡辺 looks like "cross" + "border", and it's often explained as "crossing a river". Wikipedia says otherwise: the name comes from Watanabe no Tsu, a port on the Yodo river in old Settsu Province, near today's Osaka. It's a place name, and never an occupational surname.

Satō, Itō, Katō: the names with 藤 (wisteria)

On its own, 藤 (ふじ, fuji, “wisteria (esp. Japanese wisteria, Wisteria floribunda)”) is the wisteria plant. In surnames it's usually read とう (tō), or どう (dō) as in 近藤 and 遠藤, and it's the most common kanji in the top 50: 佐藤, 伊藤, 加藤, 斉藤, 斎藤, 後藤, 近藤 and 遠藤 end with it, and 藤田 and 藤井 start with it. That's 10 of the 50.

The reason is a family. According to Wikipedia, the Fujiwara clan (藤原) gave its samurai surnames ending with the first kanji of its own name. Japanese Wikipedia adds an important caveat: most families with these names are thought to have no blood link to the Fujiwara.

Satō

Satō is believed to come from Sano (佐野), in today's Tochigi Prefecture. The story is that descendants of Fujiwara no Hidesato, a Heian-period commander linked to the area, combined 佐 from Sano with 藤 from Fujiwara: "the Fujiwara of Sano". The city of Sano holds a Satō Day (佐藤の日) every 10 March and calls itself the "holy land of Satō".

Suzuki

Suzuki is not a 藤 name, and its story is different. 鈴木 reads as "bell tree", yet the name is said to come from a dialect word, すずき, meaning piled-up ears of rice in southern Wakayama and Mie, the Kumano area. Tradition credits the name to the Hozumi clan in the Heian period. The Suzuki family is linked to the priests of the Kumano shrines, and the name is common where those shrines are common: mostly central and eastern Japan.

When did Japanese people get surnames?

You'll often read that ordinary Japanese people had no surnames until the 1870s. That's not quite right.

In the Edo period, surnames were treated as a privilege of the samurai. In principle, farmers were not allowed to use them in public or in front of samurai. But many ordinary families had one and used it privately. In Kodaira, in Tokyo, a temple bell cast in 1686 carries the names of the farming families who donated it, with more than 30 different surnames.

Then the law changed in two steps:

Families who had used a surname privately could now use it openly. Those who had none made one up, for example from a place or a trade, sometimes with help from a village scholar or official. Wikipedia dates the modern structure of a Japanese name, surname plus given name, to these years.

Name order: the family name comes first

In Japanese, the surname always comes first, then the given name. The given name is 下の名前 (したのなまえ, shita no namae, “first name”), literally "the lower name". The general word for a name is 名前 (なまえ, namae, “name”). When someone asks for your name politely, they'll often say お名前 (おなまえ, onamae, “name”), the honorific form of the same word.

In romaji, the order used to follow English. Since 1 January 2020, Japanese government documents in English put the family name first too, following a government decision of 25 October 2019. In everyday English, you'll still see both orders.

How to address someone

In Japan, people you don't know well are often called by their surname, not their given name, with a title after it:

Calling someone by their bare name, with no title, is 呼び捨て (よびすて, yobisute, “addressing (someone) without using a suffix such as "-san" or "-chan" (considered impolite)”). The dictionary notes that it's considered impolite, and with people you don't know well, or anyone senior, it is. Close friends and family often drop the title, but Wikipedia warns it can still sound rude, so as a learner, wait until someone invites you to. Foreigners are usually forgiven, and adding さん is the safe habit. For more on first meetings, see Hello in Japanese.

Surnames and marriage

Japanese law requires a married couple to share one surname: either the husband's or the wife's. According to the Ministry of Justice, about 94.1% of couples chose the husband's surname in 2024, down from about 97.0% in 2000. The surname someone had before marriage (usually a woman's) is their 旧姓 (きゅうせい, kyūsei, “one's original family name”).

Whether couples should be allowed to keep separate surnames, 夫婦別姓 (ふうふべっせい, fūfubessei, “use of separate surnames by a married couple”), has been debated for decades. The Ministry prepared reform bills in 1996 and 2010, but neither was put before parliament.

How to read Japanese last names (even Japanese people ask)

Reading a surname from its kanji is hard, and not just for learners. The same kanji can hide different readings, so Japanese people often have to ask too.

One name, several readings

The same kanji can be read in more than one way, and each family has its own. The names dictionary JMnedict lists 中島 as なかじま and なかしま, and 山崎 as やまざき and やまさき. 東海林 is the extreme case: it's read Shōji (しょうじ) or Tōkairin (とうかいりん).

One reading, several spellings

It works the other way too. 斉藤 and 斎藤 are both さいとう. Watanabe can be 渡辺, 渡邊 or 渡邉, all わたなべ, and Wikipedia counts at least 51 recorded variants of its second kanji.

Readings you can't guess

長谷川 is はせがわ (Hasegawa), although 長 and 谷 are usually read なが and たに. Some names are puzzles that only make sense once explained. Wikipedia gives two famous ones:

How Japanese people manage

They ask, or they look for the reading in kana. Business cards, 名刺 (めいし, meishi, “business card”), often print the name's reading. Forms often have a space for it, usually filled in in katakana. That space is for the ふりがな (furigana, “furigana”), and it's often labelled in katakana too: フリガナ. If katakana is new to you, see What Is Katakana? or the katakana chart.

Same sound, different word

Some surnames are spelled the same in kana as everyday words written with other kanji. Satō (さとう) is also the word 砂糖 (さとう, satō, “sugar”), and Suzuki (すずき) the word すずき (suzuki, “Japanese sea bass (Lateolabrax japonicus)”), a fish. The pitch can differ: Wikipedia gives the surname 佐藤 a high first syllable. In writing, the kanji show which one is meant. In speech, the context tells you.

The mark in 佐々木

The 々 in 佐々木 isn't a kanji of its own. It's an 踊り字 (おどりじ, odoriji, “iteration mark (used to represent repetition of the previous character)”): it repeats the kanji before it. So 佐々木 is 佐 + 佐 + 木, read さ, さ, き: Sasaki.

Where each name is common: Satō in the north, Tanaka in the west

Surnames aren't spread evenly across Japan. Meiji Yasuda's 2013 survey, as tabulated by the statistics site Shakai Jitsujō Data Zuroku, shows a clear east and west split.

In the north east, a few names cover a big share of people. In Yamagata, 7.17% of people are Satō. In Shizuoka, 4.90% are Suzuki, the highest share of that name anywhere. Western Japan has more variety, and the same source sees a general pattern: the further east, the more concentrated the names; the further west, the more varied and rare.

Some prefectures stand out:

• Okinawa has a top five found almost nowhere else: 比嘉 (ひが, Higa), 金城, 大城, 宮城 and 玉城. Readings of the last four vary by family.
• Aomori's most common name is 工藤, which isn't in the top three of any other prefecture.
• Miyazaki's is 黒木, read くろき or くろぎ. Surname researcher Hiroshi Morioka links it to timber, the old region's famous product.

Other names are typical of a group of neighbouring prefectures, according to the same source:

These are tendencies, not rules. The same source notes that Tanaka, uncommon in eastern Japan, still reaches fourth or fifth place in Tokyo and Kanagawa, probably because people move there from all over the country.

Questions about Japanese last names

What is the most common Japanese last name?

Satō (佐藤) is the most common Japanese last name. Meiji Yasuda's 2008 survey estimated about 1.99 million people with it, just ahead of Suzuki (鈴木).

What are the rarest Japanese last names?

There's no official list of the rarest Japanese surnames. Well-known unusual ones include 小鳥遊 (Takanashi) and 四月一日 (Watanuki), famous for their readings rather than for a measured rarity.

What is an old Japanese last name?

Fujiwara (藤原, ふじわら) is one of the best known old names. It was the name of the clan that, according to Wikipedia, gave its 藤 to many samurai surnames, and Satō's origin story goes back to a Heian-period Fujiwara commander.

What is a common Japanese full name?

The classic example is 山田太郎 (Yamada Tarō), the Japanese placeholder name, like "John Smith" in English. The female version is 山田花子 (Yamada Hanako).

What is a stereotypical Japanese name?

The names people think of first are the most common ones: Satō, Suzuki, Takahashi and Tanaka. For a made-up example, Japan's placeholder name is 山田太郎 (Yamada Tarō).

What does Suzuki mean?

Suzuki (鈴木) is written "small bell" + "tree". The name itself is said to come from a Kumano dialect word for piled-up ears of rice, not from bells.

What does Yamamoto mean?

Yamamoto (山本) is written "mountain" + "origin, base", so literally "the base of the mountain". It's one of the landscape names, ninth in the 2008 ranking.

What are good or pretty Japanese last names?

That's a matter of taste. If you're choosing by meaning, names built from nature kanji have pleasant ones: 清水 (pure water), 青木 (green tree), 藤井 (wisteria well) and 小川 (brook).

Do Japanese people put their family name first?

Yes: in Japanese, the family name always comes first. Since 2020, Japanese government documents in English put it first in romaji too.

How many surnames are there in Japan?

Estimates range from about 100,000 to over 300,000 Japanese surnames. The number depends on whether you count spelling variants like 斉藤 and 斎藤, and different readings, as separate names.

When did Japanese people get surnames?

Surnames became compulsory for ordinary Japanese people on 13 February 1875. Many ordinary families had surnames before that, but couldn't use them in public.

Do Japanese women take their husband's surname?

Usually, yes. Married couples must share one surname, and about 94% chose the husband's in 2024.

What does Tanaka mean?

Tanaka (田中) is written "rice field" + "middle", so literally "in the middle of the rice fields".

What does kiyo mean in Japanese?

Kiyo is a reading of the kanji 清, which means "pure". It's the first kanji of the surname 清水 (Shimizu), where it's read differently.

Sources

• Words: JMdict (EDRDG, CC BY-SA 4.0), including its note that 呼び捨て is considered impolite. Surname readings: JMnedict (EDRDG, CC BY-SA 4.0). Kanji meanings and school grades: KANJIDIC2 (EDRDG).
• The ranking (Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance, August 2008): 明治安田生命, 全国同姓調査, 24 September 2008. The 2008 estimates, and the share of the top 10 and top 100: Wikipedia, List of common Japanese surnames.
• Name order, kanji count, places in names, tanakamura, the Fujiwara 藤 names, the two Saitō kanji, 東海林, 小鳥遊, 四月一日, 山田太郎, yobisute, the voiced dō of 藤, furigana on cards and forms, Edo-period surnames and the 1870s: Wikipedia, Japanese name.
• The number of surnames, their origins (citing 高澤等 and 森岡浩, 日本人の名字と家紋), the Heian nobles, the late-Heian warriors and Kamakura divided inheritance, the Fujiwara caveat, the household and Korea: Japanese Wikipedia, 名字.
• The laws of 1870 and 1875: Japanese Wikipedia, 平民苗字必称義務令. Edo-period farmers' surnames: Kodaira City, 近世の百姓に苗字はあったのか.
• Satō's origin and pronunciation, Satō Day, its romaji variants, the 2023 figure and the 2531 projection: Wikipedia, Satō. Suzuki: Wikipedia, Suzuki (surname). Watanabe: Wikipedia, Watanabe.
• Regions, Okinawa, Aomori, Miyazaki and the Kumano link: 社会実情データ図録, 都道府県に多い名字 (data: Meiji Yasuda Life, 2013).
• Romaji order since 2020: JICE, Family-name-first order on official documents.
• Marriage and surnames, and the reform bills of 1996 and 2010: Ministry of Justice, 選択的夫婦別氏制度（いわゆる選択的夫婦別姓制度）について, with figures from the Ministry of Health's vital statistics.
• Reviewed by two independent reviews; the points about 姓 on forms, 様, 呼び捨て, フリガナ, お名前, the pitch of 佐藤 and 砂糖, 長谷川's reading, the Okinawan readings and the reading of 高澤 are waiting for a native speaker's check.