A study conducted by Tohoku University (northern Japan) predicts it will be around the year 2,500 all Japanese will have the surname “Sato”, currently the most common surname in Asian countrydue to the current trend of Population decline and current civil law regulations.
“Sato” ranks first among the most common surnames among Japanese people and was borne by 1.5% of the Japanese population in 2023, according to estimates from a study led by Professor Hiroshi Yoshida of the Center for Social and Research Research. Economics of Aging from the above-mentioned university.
This scientist calculates that the number of people with the surname Sato has multiplied by 1,0083 in recent years and conducted a survey on how this number would develop taking into account the demographic trends of accelerated aging and a decline in birth rates lead to a sustained net population loss.
Your study also takes into account Japanese regulations that require a man and woman to adopt the same family name when they marry, either his or hers. In Japan, only a surname and a first name are used.
From these factors, Yoshida calculates that in the year 2446 half of the Japanese population will have the surname “Sato” and that in the year 2531 all Japanese will have the same surname.
The study was published in the middle of the year ongoing debate in Japan regarding the above-mentioned civil law regulations on surnames. Numerous voices, including from the ruling party, are calling for men and women to be allowed to keep their family name after marriage or even have two surnames, as is the case in countries like Spain.
The report’s authors sought to “illustrate the problem of selective surname separation in marriages with numbers,” Yoshida said in introducing his report.
“If everyone has the surname ‘Sato san’ (‘Don or Mrs. Sato’), there will be no choice but to identify themselves by their first name only. That would not be an ideal scenario,” the professor said, in statements to local media