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I sometimes see some Japanese will use the name of a place / city as their family name (for example: Shibuya ○○, or Chiba ○○). Are these names just coincidentally the same as the name of the place? Or do they purposely use the name of the places as their own?
- Country or region Japan
That's not a coincidence.
Originally, the people who have territories take their own name from the land name.
Because they are inherited, now there are a lot of people who unrelated it.
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- Country or region Japan
Some are related while others not.
Basically, yes, many Japanese family names are derived from place names. There are hundreds of thousands of studies on this topic.
The same place name can be found in other places, and they can change through the history, and family names also. So it does not mean that a Chiba today has some special affection to Chiba prefecture!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiba_clan
I know some cities that have my family name, but I can’t trace back my family history to any of those places. Moreover, my family name is a depiction of a very common geographical feature; it can be anywhere!
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- Country or region Indonesia
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