Sunday, Oct. 11, 2009

America may have around a million surnames and Finland the most in the world in proportion to its population, but with more than 100,000 family names now in use in Japan, this country puts China's few thousand and Korea's mere 200 firmly in the name-game shade.

Here, in descending order, are the top 100 most common Japanese family names these days — followed by a list of the five most commonly occurring ones in each of the country's 47 prefectures.

1. Sato
2. Suzuki
3. Takahashi
4. Tanaka
5. Watanabe
6. Ito
7. Yamamoto
8. Nakamura
9. Kobayashi
10. Kato
11. Yoshida
12. Yamada
13. Sasaki
14. Yamaguchi
15. Saito
16. Matsumoto
17. Inoue
18. Kimura
19. Hayashi
20. Shimizu
21. Yamazaki
22. Mori
23. Abe
24. Ikeda
25. Hashimoto
26. Yamashita
27. Ishikawa
28. Nakajima
29. Maeda
30. Fujita
31. Ogawa
32. Goto
33. Okada
34. Hasegawa
35. Murakami
36. Kondo
37. Ishii
38. Saito (different kanji)
39. Sakamoto
40. Endo
41. Aoki
42. Fujii
43. Nishimura
44. Fukuda
45. Ota
46. Miura
47. Fujiwara
48. Okamoto
49. Matsuda
50. Nakagawa
51. Nakano
52. Harada
53. Ono
54. Tamura
55. Takeuchi
56. Kaneko
57. Wada
58. Nakayama
59. Ishida
60. Ueda
61. Morita
62. Hara
63. Shibata
64. Sakai
65. Kudo
66. Yokoyama
67. Miyazaki
68. Miyamoto
69. Uchida
70. Takagi
71. Ando
72. Taniguchi
73. Ohno
74. Maruyama
75. Imai
76. Takada
77. Fujimoto
78. Takeda
79. Murata
80. Ueno
81. Sugiyama
82. Masuda
83. Sugawara
84. Hirano
85. Kojima
86. Otsuka
87. Chiba
88. Kubo
89. Matsui
90. Iwasaki
91. Sakurai
92. Kinoshita
93. Noguchi
94. Matsuo
95. Nomura
96. Kikuchi
97. Sano
98. Onishi
99. Sugimoto
100. Arai

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