Japanese names explained  Why are there so few surnames and so
many Tanakas and Suzukis?  Why are most Japanese surnames based
on nature and natural features? Why do Japanese surnames not
describe their ancestor’s jobs?     1. Georgie said,
November 15, 2011 at 11:34 am      I’m not quite sure where I
got this from, but I think it may have been from my last
Japanese teacher; but the idea was that at one point only
shogun/samurai/some merchants actually used family names — and
that the lower class/peasants were either not allowed to or
simply didn’t feel the need to distinguish themselves and use
them. When all that heirarchy was eventually overthrown, the
peasants — strapped for ideas, started to name themselves after
the natural features of the lands they’d worked for so many
years.     I remember she said you can tell a bit about a
Japanese person’s heritage from it because only lineage that
went back to those upper classes retained abstract family names
as opposed to landscape based ones.    2. alexca