Names of Japan JP

Ogihara — Japanese given-name survey (OSF) records 紬 as the commonest given name in Japan; the names that most distinguish Japan from the rest of the world are 田中, 斎藤 and 宮崎.

Written in Japanese.

Population
126M
Official registers
1
Name forms recorded
22K
BBuilt from 1 official register (2024), 22,192 name forms in our corpus, 5 cited works.

At least one official register, plus a written account of the naming system.

The account of the naming system rests on encyclopaedia and genealogy sources; it has not yet been checked against onomastic literature.

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of Japan are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Japan included.

How names work in Japan

Names in Japan follow one naming tradition. Its structure, its given-name and surname stock, how to address someone and what trips software up are set out on its own page.

The most common names in Japan

Counts not recorded by the publisher · authority tier 3
Ogihara — Japanese given-name survey (OSF), 2024 — 10 given names counted over a population the publisher did not record, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1紬38—
2翠31—
3凛29—
4芽依26—
5陽葵25—
6葵24—
7陽菜22—
8心陽20—
9心晴17—
10結愛14—

Where the two lists disagree

12 of Ogihara — Japanese given-name survey (OSF)'s top 12 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

Ogihara — Japanese given-name survey (OSF) 2024Across all records凪: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. 凪not ranked朝陽: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. 朝陽not ranked陽翔: 3 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country3. 陽翔not ranked蓮: 4 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country4. 蓮not ranked陽向: 5 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country5. 陽向not ranked律: 6 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country6. 律not ranked湊斗: 7 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country7. 湊斗not ranked颯真: 8 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country8. 颯真not ranked暖: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. 暖not ranked碧: 10 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country10. 碧not ranked陽大: 11 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country11. 陽大not ranked颯: 12 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country12. 颯not ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
Ogihara — Japanese given-name survey (OSF), 2024 on the left; every record we hold for Japan on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of Japan

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Japan holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

YukiHiroshiTakashiYukaMikiHiroyukiDaisukeYukoSatoshiYusukeHirokiMegumiAkiraKenjiKaoriあ弘TakahiroKeikoMihoHiromiTomokoAkikoTakuyaMayumiKoji明MasahiroYokoAyakaMiyukiMikaAyaYumiRieYujiNorikoMasakiTakayukiYutaJunkoHitomiHirokoYuukiKenichiKazuyaHarukaEmiYukikoNaokoSakiYumikoKazuhiroKanaNaomi修HiroakiSayakaMasayukiJun
Sized by how much of the difference between Japan's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.●

Over time

凛陽菜さくら葵結衣2004202467
Ogihara — Japanese given-name survey (OSF), 2004–2024 (21 years). The line is that register's own figure for each year — not a total across registers, which would count the same people twice. The publisher labels this series “flow”.

Up to five names at a time.

Scripts & spelling

Names in Japan are written in Latin (67%), Han (23%) and Japanese (10%), measured over the spellings our corpus records for this country.

田中surname●
斎藤surname●
宮崎surname●
高木surname●
千葉surname●
The best-attested names in Japan, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

  • Ogihara — Japanese given-name survey (OSF)2024headline (given)

    Ogihara et al. (OSF); Meiji Yasuda survey sample. Counts: not recorded. given. 14 forms. 2004–2024.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-backfilled registry stub (2026-06-05); verify publisher/URL. 1,170 rows, name_types=['given'], evidence=['count']. source note: Meiji Yasuda survey sample; not national birth registry

    Last verified 2026-06-05.

Cited works

Behind this page's own account — its one-line answer, its explanation of why the rankings differ, and the notes on its registers. Each naming tradition cites its own sources on its page. Not yet checked against onomastic literature.

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-09-12.

Questions

What is the most common given name in Japan?
凪, according to Ogihara — Japanese given-name survey (OSF) (2024), with 32 bearers recorded among boys.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Japan?
Because they count different people. Ogihara — Japanese given-name survey (OSF) (2024) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is 凪. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Yuki. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Japan”, https://nelma.mondonomo.ai/names/JP (data snapshot 2026-09-12). Official figures from Ogihara — Japanese given-name survey (OSF).