Name meanings?

[masaegu]

Originally Posted by duo797

My impression was that a number of family names were places where people came from, similar to how hundreds of years ago what we take to be surnames were really just saying 'Person of So-and-so city' like how 'Leonardo da Vinci' (probably misspelled a bit) is just 'Leonardo of Vinci'. Similarly someone with the family name 川口 might have had ancestors who lived in an area at the mouth of a river.

Would anyone with more experience in japanese family names and history care to confirm or deny this for me? It's an assumption I carry and if it's wrong I'd love to know so I don't continue.

This is basically true. The vast majority of Japanese did not have family names until about 300 years ago. Those who did were the nobility, the higher-ranked samurai and such. The rest of us commoners had been addressed mostly as "(First name) of the so-and-so district". I just said "first name" but it was not really a first name since that was the ONLY name they had.

After the commoners were permitted to own family names, some just took the name of the area they lived in, which is what they had essentially been adressed as before they had family names. Some took the family name of their village chief while others created their own.

For those who know some Japanese, you must have noticed that many family names contain the names of the things that exist around us such as 「山」「川」「谷」「田」, etc. This fact should explain how many family names were created.

[blutorange]

You do realize that without the original kanji form of the names, finding out a Japanese name's meaning is not only hard, but utterly impossible? Take "tsuji" for example, JMNdict lists the following names, all pronounced "tsuji":
十
巷
街
辻
逵
達
十字
津地
津慈
津持
津治
津路
辻季
都司
都地
都治
All of them would imply a different meaning. But I guess you could use Find words - Denshi Jisho names dictionary, enter a name in romaji and then click on "kanji details" at the results page to show the kanjis' individual meanings...