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Officially, among Japanese names there are 291,129 different Japanese surnames (姓, sei), [1] as determined by their kanji, although many of these are pronounced and romanized similarly. Conversely, some surnames written the same in kanji may also be pronounced differently. [2]
Japanese names are usually written in kanji. Because there are many possible readings for kanji names, including special name-only readings called nanori, furigana are often used to give the readings of names. [4] On Japanese official forms, where the name is to be written, there is always an adjacent column for the name to be written in furigana.
For example, はは (haha) could be written はゝ. ゞ: 2136: 1-1-22: 309E Hiragana iteration mark with a dakuten (voiced consonant). For example, はば (haba) could be written はゞ. 〃 2137: 1-1-23: 3003: nonoten (ノノ点) Ditto mark. The name originates from resemblance to two katakana no characters (ノノ). 〱: 3031: Kana vertical ...
Katakana are also sometimes used to indicate words being spoken in a foreign or otherwise unusual accent. For example, in a manga, the speech of a foreign character or a robot may be represented by コンニチワ konnichiwa ("hello") instead of the more typical hiragana こんにちは. Some Japanese personal names are written in katakana ...
Ancient clan names are still prominent today, if altered somewhat, due to those ties with ancestry and history. As you'll see, there are many variations of Japanese last names with similar meanings.
The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana.Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana, used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis.
The list is sorted by Japanese reading (on'yomi in katakana, then kun'yomi in hiragana), in accordance with the ordering in the official Jōyō table. This list does not include characters that were present in older versions of the list but have since been removed ( 勺 , 銑 , 脹 , 錘 , 匁 ).
Therefore, to those familiar with Japanese names, which name is the surname and which is the given name is usually apparent, no matter in which order the names are presented. It is thus unlikely that the two names will be confused, for example, when writing in English while using the family name-given name naming order.