Name of Japanese people
Japanese name consists of family name and first name.
The order of Japanese name is (Family name) - (First name) contrary to the name in many countries.
This order is the same as the name of Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese peoples.
For example, "Suzuki Ichiro"
"Suzuki" is the family name and "Ichiro" is the first name.
But, when we introduce ourselves to Western people, we often say our family name after our first name like "Ichiro Suzuki" following the name in Western countries.
Therefore, when you must remember the name of an important person, you had better ask which is the first name.
In this website, I write each Japanese name in the Japanese style, (Family name) - (First name).
Japanese family name
Basically, the syllable of Japanese language consists of the combination of a consonant and a vowel.
And single vowel and single 'N' are also a syllable.
Many Japanese names have three or four syllables.
Some other Japanese names have two or five syllables.
Each name is written in a few kanji characters (Chinese character).
Most names consist of two characters, and some names consist of one character or three characters.
The names written in four or more characters are rare.
It is said that there are more than 300,000 kinds of family names in Japan.
As a matter of fact, no classmate with the same family name as I was in my class during my school days.
There are a wide variety of family names in Japan.
But the family names of Korean and Chinese people almost consist of one kanji character.
So there are a very narrower variety of family names than Japan.
I introduce the top 100 family names in Japan.
But the people with these family names is only one third of the total population in Japan.
[Top 1-20]
[Top 21-40]
[Top 41-60]
[Top 61-80]
[Top 81-100]
Japanese first name
After a baby has been born, the parents enjoy naming.
Generally, to create the first name, they combine a few kanji characters in Japan.
Of course, they can also use hiragana and katakana characters.
Each kanji character has some meanings.
They can select the characters for the baby from about 3,000 characters.
Naturally enough, the parents select the characters of good meaning for the life of the baby.
For boy, they select the characters with meanings such as "big", "great", "brave", "fly", "fight", "smart", "diligent" etc.
For girl, they select the characters with meanings such as "bright", "sunny", "beautiful", "lovely", and some flower names.
Also, the characters meaning happiness, ideal, hope, etc are selected.
Then, they give the reading to the combination of the characters.
And they register the birth of their baby with both the characters and reading of the name at the city office.
Traditional name for men has "o", "rou", "ichi", "ji", "zou", etc. at the end of the name.
And traditional name for women has "ko", "mi", "yo", etc. at the end of the name.
But these are old-fashioned, so recent young parents don't like so much.
The popular names are changing in the flow of the times.
Recently, similar names between boy and girl are chosen.
I introduce the top 10 of the name in each period.
1955
Now, they are the age of sixties.
[Boy]
[Girl]
1970
Now, they are around fifty.
[Boy]
[Girl]
1985
Now, they are the age of thirties.
[Boy]
[Girl]
2000
Now, they are around twenty.
[Boy]
[Girl]
2015
Now, they are little children.
[Boy]
[Girl]
2020
The newest top 10 of current babies.
[Boy]
[Girl]