Thursday, October 25, 2018

Most Common Surnames in Japan




The Meiji Yasuda Insurance Company surveyed 6.55 million customers.  The top results showed 1,940,000 individuals in Japan have the surname Sato, 1,820,000 have the name Suzuki, 1,430,000 have the name Takahashi, 1,330,000 the name Tanaka, and in fifth place, 1,190,000 have the name Watanabe.  The last time this survey was conducted was in 2013, with the top three most common names being the same as this year's survey.  


I have several sets of students with the same family names.  I never call my students by their first names, so I distinguish them by the departments they work in. 


According the the 2010 US Census the top five surnames in the United States were Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, and Jones.  Both my first name and my last name are common in the US, with my first name, Pamela, ranking 37th, according to Mongabaydotcom


Is your name common or rare?  Does this ever cause problems for you?

8 comments:

kiwikid said...

Common names are the same here, Smith and Jones and no doubt others these days. My surname is Palmer and people have trouble spelling it correctly.

Miranda said...

Neither of my names are especially common. My first name has been gaining in popularity, but loads of people still can't spell it properly. :P

Julie said...

Strangely my Christian name ranks 52 on your list ...and my house number is 52!

Queeniepatch said...

My first name is ranked No 4 in Sweden, so it must be common. My surname, does not exist there.

Carol- Beads and Birds said...

Hmmm. I didn't go far enough to find my real first name, but my shortened name is #18. I'm going to send that web site to my Grand DIL to check out boy names for the baby.
xx, Carol

rosey175 said...

I went from having a very common maiden name to one no one can say or pronounce properly the first go. So now my whole name just turns into spaghetti to everyone which is amusing to me. My nickname works well enough... but people expect it to be Rosie. :D

Sheryl said...

The Spanish have very few words that start with SH, so they have difficulty in pronouncing my name, I´m called a lot of odd variations here in the north of Spain.

Leonore Winterer said...

Both my first name and surname are fairly rare. Apparently only about 1.400 people world wide share my surname (about 300 of them in Germany). As for my first name, it's rare form of a name that's not all that common in the first place - 'Eleonore' is the more common version. At least I have a Swedish royal to share my name with now!