A little history of Japan and Japanese names. Back in the day, the citizens of Japan only had first names, and used the name of their birthplace or hometown as their last names. But as population grew, it became harder for their government to manage people that had overlapping names from the same city, so they ruled out that all citizens require a last name. This caused major confusion at first because citizens were not accustomed to have a last name aside from the name of their birthplace. So they resorted to use symbolism of their environment in to their names. Some very common ones are Tanaka(田中) literately meaning middle of rice-field Kobayashi(小林) meaning small woods Even up to this day, you can tell what kind of place that land used to be by asking local people for their last name. For example, The place I lived, Shibuya. Had many families with Yanagi in their names. It means Willow, implying that in the past, Shibuya used to have lots of Willow trees growing until modernization started.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 09:52:53 +0000
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