What are the most common Japanese last names? Here are the top 10!

1. 佐藤（さとう/ satoo)  - Sato
2. 鈴木（すずき/suzuki) - Suzuki
3. 高橋（たかはし/takahashi) - Takahashi
4. 田中（たなか/tanaka) - Tanaka
5. 渡辺（わたなべ/watanabe) - Watanabe
6. 伊藤（いとう/itoo) - Ito
7. 山本（やまもと/yamamoto) - Yamamoto
8. 中村（なかむら/nakamura) - Nakamura
9. 小林（こばやし/kobayashi) - Kobayashi
10. 斉藤（さいとう/saitoo) - Saito

Note in the above, what follows the hiragana is the pronunciation key. What you see after a dash is how the name would show up on a passport. Usually, they are the same but notice there’s a difference when the name ends with う.

For example, the most popular name, さとう, is pronounced with the long “o” sound. Thus, the pronunciation is indicated above as “satoo”. However, when the name is written in the Roman Alphabets (what we call “romaji”), we usually go with “Sato”. This is because if we write “Satoo”, then people may pronounce it as the sound that rhymes with the English word “tatoo”, which is wrong. Also, we don’t write “Satou” either because the う here is not actually pronounced.

What’s your favorite Japanese last name?