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Demographics professor warns that by 2531, everyone in Japan will be named Sato
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 1123581321 3y agoThe single surname law seems irrelevant unless people named Sato have more sons than daughters.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- GolDDranks 3y agoIt's relevant in the sense that it reduces the diversity in names. If the parents could both keep their surnames, they'd have two alternatives left for their children instead of one. I bet that more often than currently, people would choose the rarer name for their children.
- kgwgk 3y agoThey could alredy be choosing the rarer name for the couple and the children.
- GolDDranks 3y agoBut the thing is, it doesn't happen. As it is said in the article, in 95% of cases, men don't want to change their name, and woman yield, regardless of the rarity/commonness of the name.
- 1123581321 3y agoWhy would they choose the rarer name? People always like popular names, so it seems at best it wouldn’t help and at worst it would risk faster erasure. If Japan wants a legal solution to this, how about requiring the less popular surname to be kept by the new couple, based on official statistics?
- autoexecbat 3y agoThere's popular, and then there's double digit % popular. I have a very popular first name, but it's still way less than 1% of population for my gender and it's already "too common" at my workplace such that we have to use surnames instead
- tomjakubowski 3y agoAt more than one workplace now we've had to come up with a system for distinguishing our Tims.
- neurostimulant 3y agoHaving a popular name is not that great. When I was in high school, me and three of my classmates share the same name. We had to comes up with some nicknames to refer to each other.
- 1123581321 3y agoI have the most popular name in my generation for my language, so I understand, but people still choose them. The desire to choose a pleasing sound that others will also like is strong and cross-cultural, and applies to surnames as well when a choice is possible.
- GolDDranks 3y agoTo avoid confusion. We had three Nakamura's at office one time, so we defaulted to first names. We currently have two Nomura's and we use nicknames for them. I've also met people who – against the normal, mainstream Japanese way – basically always prefer their first names, because their last name is so common people are going to mix them up with... someone. I sometimes sense a kind of an aura from these people: they don't want to be seen as just "one of the Satо̄s or Tanakas". (Btw. those are the exact names of the people that came to mind, whom I felt that aura of not wanting to use their last name.) I think that those kind of people would choose the rarer name for their kids. But they don't also want to change theirs, because they are in the middle of a professional carrier, and being the busy people they are, they don't want to stir things up.
- green-eclipse 3y agoSouth Korea has that problem right now. 20+% of people have the surname Kim [0]. 14% have the surname Lee [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_(Korean_surname) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_(Korean_surname) [1] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_(Korean_surname) https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_(Korean_surname)
- tgv 3y agoNguyen: > By some estimates 30 to 39 percent of Vietnamese people bear this surname.
- dexwiz 3y agoWasn’t this caused because when the country adopted surnames, people were allowed to choose their name, and most people chose the name of the current ruling family?
- lainga 3y agoThe explanation I saw was tax farming. You don't have a surname, so for the Emperor's purposes, you're getting the surname of the guy who collects your taxes for me
- wrp 3y agoThere is a cultural difference that make the situation in Vietnam not so bad as it sounds. In Korea, as in Japan, the cultural norm is to refer to people by their family name. In Vietnamese culture, the given name is normally used.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoHow is that even tenable in the present day in Korea? There would be dozens of Kims in any workplace.
- wrp 3y ago
- kouru225 3y agoI disagree. I believe that in 2531 everyone will be named xxxPu$$y5l4y3r69xxx
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoHow did you know my password?
- kouru225 3y agoHax
- Tade0 3y agoThis happens more often around the world than one would think. My surname can be traced back to a single city where it most likely originated and over generations an additional, informal (so not present in any official document) adjectives were added to determine who was related.
- bell-cot 3y agoJust from this part: > Demographic Professor Warns That by $Year, ... Japan ... $Problem My instant assumptions would be that $Problem = "will have a population of zero", and that $Year would be much sooner than 2531.
- karaterobot 3y agoThis claims not to be an April Fool's prank, but it has to be a little bit tongue in cheek. To earnestly make predictions based on assumptions about the world more than 500 years in the future implies at least a wink when coming from a serious scholar. It reminds me of a claim I heard as a kid that I still think about today. This was a few years after Elvis died. It went something like "before his death in 1977, there were less than 100 Elvis impersonators in the world. By 1980, there were more than 10,000. If this trend continues, the entire biomass of the Earth will be composed of Elvis impersonators by the year 2000". This was obviously a joke, and is not even pointing out a fallacy relevant to the subject of the article, but I thought it was cute.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y agoIt was actually about to happen, but thanks to a heroic effort from 1995-1999 we did avert the "Y2K Elvis Problem"
- throwup238 3y agoI did my part! I was working at the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the time and wrote a script to update 10 million rows in their occupation database from "Elvis impersonator" to "software developer" (I think that's what started the dot-com boom) Now it's just a cron job they run once a month.
- sobellian 3y agoSo that's why they say software is eating the world...
- 082349872349872 3y agocompare "Why are we not all called Smith?" https://books.google.ch/books?id=wUdtVHBr-OQC&pg=PA413&lpg=PA413&dq=körner+%22why+are+we+not+all+called+smith%22&source=bl&ots=d7wyrj6YyA&sig=ACfU3U1WSr9dkb6HUhCTjxZs6AstZCO8Kw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjY49uOy6GFAxUq9gIHHaxWDNcQ6AF6BAghEAM#v=onepage&q=körner%20%22why%20are%20we%20not%20all%20called%20smith%22&f=false https://books.google.ch/books?id=wUdtVHBr-OQC&pg=PA413&lpg=P...
- diggan 3y ago> including the assumption that Japan never amends their law that mandates married couples share the same surname. In fact, Japan is the only country with a law forcing couples to adopt the same surname after marriage. Not familiar with Japan, Japanese or Japanese culture, is this true? If it's true, what is the arguments for having such a law?
- klyrs 3y agoI'm aware of some weirdness in Icelandic law governing naming: https://island.is/en/name-giving https://island.is/en/name-giving I'm also told that Polish law has some strict limitations on baby names. My understanding of both is that they want to preserve their culture. Feels like a weird kneejerk to me, raised in a culture where it's normal to just invent new spellings for old names.
- Scoundreller 3y agoFrance used to have a list you would have to choose from, until 1993. Lots of other laws in different countries, but Poland not mentioned on Wikipedia’s page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_law
- tivert 3y ago> Feels like a weird kneejerk to me, raised in a culture where it's normal to just invent new spellings for old names. Let me guess, you're an American (or Canadian, etc.)? One annoying tic that Americans frequently have, when encountering a cultural difference (outside a few specific superficial areas like food), is they take the position that the American way is the right way and any other ways are less than. They frequently do this while simultaneously professing how tolerant and accepting they are of other cultures. Basically, I feel Americans really want cultural difference eliminated in favor of a bland, AirSpace [1] liberalism, except for some funny hats and exotic Instagrammable cuisine. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic-global-minimalism-startup-gentrification https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic-..., https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/16/the-tyranny-of-the-algorithm-why-every-coffee-shop-looks-the-same https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/16/the-tyranny-of-...
- mathgradthrow 3y agoSato is simply the fittest surname. We shouldn't fight evolution.
- teitoklien 3y agoOngoing Satolution of Japan
- gwervc 3y agoCertainly not from a dietetic point of view.
- sheepdestroyer 3y agoSure, but you also have to take the toponymic pov where it does
- elzbardico 3y agoYeah, the couple thousand japanese folks by 2351 given the current demographic trends.
- bcatanzaro 3y agoThe graph he shows assumes a strict exponential growth. It's rather hilarious to see a projection that assumes a phenomenon will be at its fastest rate of change when it hits the strict limit (100% of the population). If he would project with a sigmoid growth curve he would get a different answer (much more plausible), but it would be less fun (definitely later than 2531).
- johnklos 3y agoThis reminds me of a fortune(6): In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. ... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. -- Mark Twain
- jp57 3y agoGiven current demographic trends, by 2531, the sole remaining person in Japan will be named Sato.
- ithkuil 3y agoWhich is not incompatible with what the title said.
- yowzadave 3y agoCould this problem be solved by using the old Scandinavian family name etymology (i.e., patronymic/matronymic surnames rather than heritable family names)?
- inawarminister 3y agoWouldn't the Arabic naming tradition, having patronymic, location (like German noble names), and 'nicknames' be more of a solution? e.g. Jason Brahamsson "the Tall" of West London
- kgwxd 3y agoLook out trees, your days are numbered.
- svara 3y agoEveryone has a surname, and as long as there is more than one surname, each surname has a non zero chance of going extinct. Therefore, in the long run, we'll all share the same surname.
- Sharlin 3y ago> Everyone has a surname https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
- svara 3y agoThat's not the only problem with my logic though ;) It's in fact the smaller one, since the rare blank surname are likely to go extinct given enough time.
- ithkuil 3y agoWhat's the likelihood of uncorrected mispellings of last names? That could AGM generative torte that counteracts the effect
- hulitu 3y ago> Demographics professor warns that by 2531, everyone in Japan will be named Sato I though they will be named San. /s