Japanese surnames generally consist of one to three Chinese characters, and a few have more than four Chinese characters.
In p>187, in order to meet the needs of conscription, taxation and household registration, Emperor Meiji issued the Order on the Permission of Miao Characters for Civilians, which allowed all Japanese, including civilians who were not allowed to have surnames before. However, Japanese civilians who are used to having no surname are not enthusiastic about it, so the work of creating surnames is slow. Therefore, in 1875, Emperor Meiji promulgated the Order that Miao people must be called, stipulating that all Japanese people must use their surnames.
in Japanese, Miao (myoji, also written as "name") means "surname" in Chinese; The Chinese name is Qian (name). There is also the word surname in Japanese, which refers to clans, including Genji, Pingshi and Fujiwara, that is, clans that once held political power in ancient times.
After the Japanese get married, because it is forbidden by law for husband and wife to have different surnames, the wife usually changes to her husband's surname, and if she is a son-in-law who is adopted by adoption, she changes to her family's surname.
besides, the Japanese emperor has no surname. It is estimated that at least 9% of the surnames currently used by Japanese residents come from the period after Meiji Restoration. However, this figure currently lacks authoritative statistics.
Extended information:
Writing method
After the simplified Chinese characters were implemented in Japan, the Chinese characters for personal names were also published as a standard, but it was not compulsory. People could apply for whether to use the new simplified Chinese characters, so some people who found it difficult to write more strokes applied. For example, many people with the surname "Shigu" changed their names.
However, there are many exceptions. For example, "Yi" and "Guang" are the opposite situations. More people continue to use "Guang" with many strokes, such as "Ryoko Hirosue", which is one of the famous examples. In general documents and media, the simplified word "Yi" often appears because of the standard of using Chinese characters, but in fact, the writing method of household registration is "Guang".
However, the people who can freely choose the writing method are limited to the families who grew up in Japan since ancient times, and the people who were naturalized after the promulgation of the Chinese Characters for Personal Names all use simplified characters.
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