In Japanese, personal names are normally written in the order family name → given name.
For example, in the name Tanaka Taro, Tanaka is the family name and Taro is the given name. This is the standard order used in Japanese in places such as school lists and official documents.
This does not simply mean that Japanese culture values the family more than the individual. Different languages and cultures use different name orders, and in modern Japanese, family name → given name is the established pattern. Similar name orders are also used in countries such as China and Korea.
Things become more complicated when Japanese names are written in English or the Roman alphabet.
In English-speaking countries, the usual order is given name → family name. For a long time, Japanese people also commonly reversed their names in English, so Tanaka Taro became Taro Tanaka.
Even today, some Japanese people feel that Taro Tanaka looks more natural when they are writing in English. Many have simply become used to using the English name order in English-language situations.
At the same time, the Japanese government now follows a policy of writing Japanese names in the family name → given name order in Roman letters in official documents as a general rule. When it is useful to make the family name clear, it may be written in capital letters, such as TANAKA Taro.
In practice, however, the two systems still exist side by side.
Foreign schools, companies, booking websites, and other services often separate names into fields such as “first name” and “last name.” Some Japanese people also continue to use the given name → family name order when writing in English.
As a result, Japanese names written in Roman letters can still appear in either order.
So why do Japanese names usually put the family name first? The simplest answer is that this is the normal name order in Japanese. The confusion comes from the fact that Japanese names were often rearranged to match English-language conventions, and that habit has not completely disappeared.
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, “Japanese Language in an International Society: The Romanization of Personal Names”
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, “Romanized Writing of Japanese Personal Names in Official Documents”
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, “Guidelines for Writing Official Documents”
