What's in a name?

Today I arrived at Kasuga elementary school an hour before my class started and so the principal and I sat in the teachers’ room and had a good old chat over some rather awful coffee. We ended up talking about names and he was very interested to know what my name meant and why my family had chosen it. That then led into a discussion of family names and their meanings. It got me thinking about Japanese names. From the kanji I am able to read it seems that the Japanese take their names from the places they used to live. For example:

Yamaguchi – 山口 – mountain mouth
Kimura – 木村 – tree village
Shirokawa – 白川 – white river
Tanaka – 田中 – middle rice field

Things like this always fascinate me so I thought I’d share it with you!