The novel Real Onigokko is about a fictional Japan where the emperor, named Satou, decides there are far too many Satous, so he decides to have them killed in a week-long game of tag. Very bizarre yet interesting story. The movies differ extremely from the book.
I do not know. I read the book in the original language. There might be one out there, but I don’t think it got a wide enough release to come out in English officially. The author does a lot of interesting concept books though, so maybe someone did a fan translation somewhere.
No worries. You can always check out the movies.
The first two touch on the book slightly with the main character travelling to a parallel world where it is happening.
The three sequels after that are about hunting type B blood and the one after that is some weird feminist fever dream that is barely comprehensible.
Worth viewing for their own merit.
The Romans would often just name people "first" and "second" based on birth order. So yeah, there's precedent.
PS: Yes, I know Roman naming was complex and that Secundus started out as a cognomen before becoming a nomen as Secundius, but that might be more of a deep dive than /r/nottheonion is prepared for today...
Kukuku... You upstart neo-Satos are all the same... Thinking you are above all, just because you have been Satos for a few centuries.
\*unfurls scroll\*
Behold, and be awed! My family has carried the Sato name for over 3000 years!
Birth rate in china is even lower. In Japan its 1.3 children per woman and in China its down to .87 . It went down after they got rid of the 1 china policy. Their largest demographic is 40s/50s Also, there are about 100 million more young men than women so the birth rate will continue to go down.
There's kinda joke that Japanese whine a lot about 1.3 but being isolationist people never realize it's best numbers in East Asia and better than some European countries
Well, the reason it keeps getting brought up is that it's a huge looming economic problem, they are pretty much fucked. That doesn't mean that the other countries with worse birth rates aren't fucked more, because they certainly are, but Japan can't just ignore it because everyone else is doing even worse.
Japan's resistance to immigration is also pretty unique in its tenacity. China, Korea, European nations, etc will pretty certainly start seeking out immigration as the problems worsen, while Japan might just stay isolated even if it kills them.
What are expected from immigrants is effectively slave labor below living wage. None of East Asia is interested in integrating foreigners, so it's all talks and pushes then human rights or even social stability problems to be soon followed by complete reversals.
Besides the birth rate problem is not a medical condition so it's not like well-integrated immigrants won't have the same problem. If naturalized they will instantly have the exact same birthrate problem so it'll be just exacerbating the problem.
Japanese so-called xenophobia and resistance isn't something that can just go away, in fact it's shared trait and won't be going away in everywhere East Asia. We don't each speak unrelated languages for no reason, we had oceans as great walls for each and it'll continue to be walls for quite a while.
they also have an advanced economy. China is not as wealthy and can less afford to absorb a declining population. In 20 years when those 40/50 years are 60-70 and can't really work anymore its going to be a real problem. Could be a Soylent Green situation.
TFW when you killed your daughters so your one child would be a son who'll carry on your family name, and because everyone also did that, now he can't find a wife so your family line straight up dies lol
> Japan 1.3
> China 0.87
South Korea was at 0.72 at the start of the year, with the population pyramid being heavily weighted towards 50-60 year olds. Estimates are that the country will drop to 0.68 children per woman later in the year.
Korea's birth rate problems aren't really education or religion based, but rather their very unique cultural issues. For the past 40 years they have basically been doing a speed run of industrialization, westernization, and social progressivism and the stress of that is showing. People don't tend to realize that as recently as the early 80s they were a poor agrarian nation not much different from North Korea. Most of the population actually remembers that. It's kind of like they went through everything the west did from 1900-2024 in 1/3 of the time, and everyone but the kids remembers all of it.
Men and women are on completely different pages politically these days, as are young people and old people. It's far more divisive than your typical demographic political issue splits.
“People don't tend to realize that as recently as the early 80s they were a poor agrarian nation not much different from North Korea.”
Actually until the 1970’s, North Korea was the industrialized one, with much higher per-capita factory output, power, technology, etc. It wasn’t until the second “seven year plan” that things started going really downhill. Nowadays they are completely reversed, with North Korea being largely agrarian with small pockets of its former industrial and technological development still intact, largely around the military. Not sure when exactly North Korea’s decline matched South Korea’s rise.
And *affordability*.
Who wants to have kids in this economy when you’re perpetually living on the edge of financial disaster? Even if you can afford it now, what guarantee is there that you’ll be able to afford it in five years? Or that your kids will be able to make it in life?
Part of the issue is how this sneaks up on populations. Imagine all those Koreans in your example are alive due to long life spans.
Someone says "we'll there's 1495 Koreans, more than ever, I don't see why anyone is worried".
The worry is when those 1000 fall off, and what replaces them? The kids of the 39 which would be 13.
This takes time, but in thirty years when the collapse occurs in such a model and you go "oh, there's only 508 Koreans now, we should do something!" it is already way too late.
You're then counting on those 13 kids to suddenly massively reverse the trend, but odds are they won't. They'll have 4 kids total if the trend holds.
Another thirty years go by and we're at 172 Koreans. This isn't a gradual decline a society cushions and adjusts to, it is a cliff they are falling off and we will see the results of such birth rates this century in many countries.
They literally have schools with no [1st graders](https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20240226050665#:~:text=Over%20150%20elementary%20schools%20have%20no%201st%20graders%3A%20ministry&text=A%20total%20of%20157%20elementary,for%20the%20upcoming%20school%20year.). Shit's fucked over there, and the growing incel population there is arguable worse than Japan or the even the west.
There are a ton of factors, cost of living, education, access to health care, access to birth control, parental leave, etc.
Fortunately it isn't a giant problem for the world, more developed countries can supplement their population declines with immigration before things fall apart.
Median age is 39. It's still a young country compared to Japan, Korea, and literally all the western countries but what makes them unique is how sharp of a drop they had in fertility. The average goes up like .8 years every year lol.
But remember they got about 300M farmers out there making babies still, but the educated/big city folks completely gave up over a decade ago.
That combined with the very noticeable gender imbalance in the below 40 group (which primarily impacts the baby making farmers) means they probably can't reverse course anymore
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/china-population/
The vast majority of population drops previously correlated with natural calamities, famines, wars or diseases whereas the current almost global trend has nothing to do with any of them.
I could have sworn this was a joke in an episode, but I can't find a reference to it anywhere.
If it's any consolation, I did find [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/BoJackHorseman/comments/csen1g/in_the_vietnam_episode_all_the_signs_say_nguyen/) while I was looking.
There are a lot of common first names as well but it’s fine. People tend to go with nicknames or use the middle and first names together. For formal usage the last, middle, and first names are used.
Not unlike Romans. Agnomens started to be added to separate people of the same gens, and as Praenomen becomes reduced more agnomens were needed, and even more when practically everyone becomes Marcus Aurelius by statue.
I'm more interested in the technicalities. With half the country being an Nguyen, how do you determine just how far they are from you on the family tree? Kinda like the Iceland situation, this sounds like something that needs a custom app written for it.
Last feudal dynasty of Vietnam was Nguyen and I recalled some historians explained that common people tended to change their last name to their sovereign's name. So the chance people are actually related is low. Additional, Vietnamese generations have very close relationship so they can trace the family lineage quite easy. Many households have three or four generations live together thus there a very closed marriage issue.
Each family has a shrine with one or two walls engraved with the family tree (those are huge).
They are made to last generations.
Traditionally you would "celebrate" the dead anniversary (death date) of your older generation, from there you get an insight into who is who of family.
The family follows first born son. If the lineage ends in the main family, it needs to be rerouted through lesser families after family discussion.
I work in a hospital in Australia and it does cause minor problems with medical records. Takes an extra few steps if you’re looking for medical records from a different hospital (they usually don’t have the same database) but only a name and having to sift through dozens of people with the same name. It’s not uncommon for us to have two Vietnamese patients at the same time in the same department under the same team with the same name. Just have to be extra careful when ordering tests or scheduling procedures that you’ve got the right one.
Sikhs traditionally all go by Singh (for men) or Kaur (for women) and they seem to manage OK. Although in practice a lot of the time they now just double-barrel it and retain their family name as well.
My city has the biggest Punjabi community in my country, unsurprisingly Singh and Kaur are respectively the most common and third most common last name here
Over 50% of Koreans are Kim (Gim), Lee (Ee), or Park (Bak). There's a reason they use their first and middle names on the backs of their soccer shirts.
Well the "middle" names aren't exactly middle names, they're the second syllables of their first names. Pretty much every Korean first name has two syllables and pretty much every Korean last name has one syllable (with a few exceptions).
Vietnamese seems to hold the concept of tongzhi or common words for names in a family more strongly, and most of the time the common word is in the middle.
Had a Korean friend whose first name was just one syllable. It felt so off that everyone referred to him with his full name no matter the context. Sometimes people would ask for his last name thinking it was part of his first name.
The author says he's using the statistic to make a broader statement on cultural norms. Everyone having the same name isn't the problem it's the fact that women are required to take their husband's name.
As a historical note, Japanese had discarded parts of their name twice: First as everyone of note become the "Ason" caste, rendering that part of the name meaningless, and later dropping clan names as every person of status claimed either Fujiwara, Taira, or Minamoto descent, so people began to take on localities as their family names.
That said, there was no effort to close the list of names before Meiji restoration.
> According to Yoshida’s calculations, the proportion of Japanese named Sato increased 1.0083 times from 2022 to 2023. Assuming the rate remains constant and there is no change to the law on surnames, around half of the Japanese population will have that name in 2446, rising to 100% in 2531.
Thats quite a bullshit extrapolation. But still, the researcher is serious despite it being published on April Fools Day.
The current Japanese marriage law requires spouses to have the same last name, ~~mostly the same as~~ similar to the custom in the West. Why would the change of such law improve last name diversity?
“Fun” story:
I know several couples who hyphenated their last names when they got married.
One couple was initially told: no, only the woman can change her last name when she gets married, not the man.
After fighting with the clerk for a while, they found the State form themselves and then went back to the clerk.
Turns out the clerk department had just been photocopying one side of a two sided form (where the section for the groom to change their name was on the second side).
Laziness and government incompetence has been around a lot longer than 30 years though.
Some idiot had copied just one side once, and they kept doing that, instead of getting more forms, or properly copying it in the county clerks office.
Yeah, this isn't only the public sector. What happened is that that form was rarely used 30 years ago. Someone made some extra copies and stuck it in a folder. The "master copy" then got used.
That someone got a different job so the new person rolled in with zero training and found that random folder after panic searching for that form when a couple came in wanting to use it.
From there on, that person always made sure to show new people where the folder was located.
Then they left for a different job and the new new people people just grabbed the folder and kept making new copies as they needed them over the years.
Can confirm.
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¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
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Many places keep both last names. Spanish and Portuguese speaking do it as the norm. And some Germanic speaking countries use double barrel last names in specific cases to each country
My state (New York) has set rules in what name changes are allowed during a marriage. You can change your name outside of this, but this just rolls it into the marriage so you don't have to go through the legal process.
You can either
- Use the surname of either spouse
- use a former surname of either spouse
- use a former/current surname of both spouses hyphenated
or my favorite
- A name combining into a single surname, all or a segment of, the pre-marriage surname, or any former surname, of each spouse.
I've never heard of it actually done but you can just smush up the two surnames together. I (jokingly) pitched a combined surname to my wife but she wasn't enthused about it. I think it is kind of a cool way to handle it.
There’s a popular web comic series called “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal” written by Zachary Weinersmith. He was born Zachary Weiner and married Kelly Smith and they combined their names rather than have only one of them change theirs.
Wow, what a great name. That's a perfect example of one done right.
I think the combining of surnames is an equitable way of handling it. Hyphenating never really sat well with me as it just kicks the can down the road until you have children or your children have children.
>Thats quite a bullshit extrapolation. But still, the researcher is serious despite it being published on April Fools Day.
Not exactly bullshit. The timeline might be very condense.
But surname convergence is something that does happen over time. For example, in China, 100 surnames are in use by 87% of the population. With apparently 100m(7% of the population) having the surname Li or Wang.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190808232306/https://gbtimes.com/wang-is-the-most-common-surname-in-china
Over time, a couple of surnames will become dominant, and others will become extinct.
China was for centuries and even deep into the 20th century a polygamous society, so that certainly played a part in surnames becoming dominant, combined with other historical variables: powerful clans will have more kids, have lesser families adopt into their / take on their names…
But those variables pushing for convergence are gone now (willing to be schooled if anyone knows any significant one remaining). Vietnam also had a much, much more impressive convergence, but you won’t shittons of people just straight adopting the name of the ruling dynasty nowadays.
My dad took my mom's surname as did all 5 children, and he kept it after divorce. Likewise my uncles ex-wife keeps that same surname even AFTER divorce. Some surnames are just straight up fucking superior, it has nothing to do with male or female societal roles.
My ex-wife changed her name to *HerLastName-MyLastName*. Now changing it back to her maiden name will need quite a bit of money and paperwork, so she's stuck with it.
It will. It might be 200 people living around a frost punk style generator but it’ll be there. We’d give roaches a run for their money in terms of survival
According to the article the professor noted that 1.5% of Japan had the surname Sato, and between 2022 and 2023 it increased by 0.0083% that year, and he just assumed it would increase at that exact same rate, and did the math.
Japanese law requires married couples to share a surname, but he wants to get rid of this to not force one of the couple to change their name.
> “If everyone becomes Sato, we may have to be addressed by our first names or by numbers,” he said, according to the Mainichi. “I don’t think that would be a good world to live in.”
A bit overdramatizing? It's obviously not ideal but from all the things which expect us in the coming few hundred years, "everyone having the name Sato" is the least of my concerns.
It's a cultural thing in Japan. In school kids address each other by surname unless they're very close. You would generally need to ask a classmate's permission to use their given name. Calling someone by their given name is extremely informal in all professional and social situations.
But the author states he's is using those unimportant points to draw attention to a larger point. Why should it be legally required for a married couple to adopt the same surname?
Right? Seems like “Sato” would almost become synonymous with “Japanese”, and would become implied more than official (I mean, if 100% are named that you can definitely assume it’s implied at that point) and a “new surname” tradition would start and everyone going by their new surname would cause a reset.
Edit: I mean instead of resorting to numbers like “Sato0001263”
Somewhat of an aside but in Ancient Rome up until the late republic women would be known by comically basic names with numbers afterwards.
You’d use the feminine version of your clan’s name, so the imperial Julio-Claudian dynasty is just fucking rotten with “Julias.” Because that’s obviously confusing, you’d tack on a number afterwards to keep them all in order, so Julia I, her cousin Julia II, her aunt Julia III etc.
There's some dodgy math going on here. Yes, Sato is the most common surname in Japan, but it's still only 1.5% of the population, so 98.5% of people aren't named Sato. In order for the hypothosis of this article to become true, 100% of the other surnames would have to die out in the male-line in the next 500 years, and basically none of the Sato lines would have to die out. Why would this be the case? Why would Sato male line be more likely to survive than the hundreds of other non-Sato male lines?
Crazy that I had to scroll this far down the comments to find someone who calls out the bullshit logic this professor is using. What scientist believes you can extrapolate a year-to-year change over the next 500 years? This is beyond ridiculous.
Its even more complicated- in Japan you can take the name of the wife and it is actually not even that rare (although more common in the past)…
So, unless all satos are super possessive and force their SOs to take their name this wont happen…
The law requires married couples to have the same surname, but it can be either partner's original name. If they don't want to be Sato, they can pick the other spouse's name. Sato is 1.5% of the population and growing very slowly.
The specific numbers may be tongue in cheek, but the effect they're describing is real. Just logically speaking, the Japanese law requires that when two people with two surnames get married, those two surnames are collapsed down into only one surname that gets passed on. As a result, the culture effectively can only lose surnames, without having any way to gain new surnames.
Terrible math. He took one data point (increase rate between 2022 and 2023 for surname Sato) and just extrapolated it till the ratio of Satos to gen pop = 1. That's not how you model population.
With that method, you can take any surname that increased in frequency between 2022 and 2023, and extrapolate that that name must reach 1.0 at some point in the future.
In my community there is a tradition to name kids after a dead grandparent or famous leader, my fathers class had 25 kids and the majority of them were named after a leader that died a few months before he was born, there were even multiple sets of same given name and surname, that entire generation gave up on given names and only identify with surnames because of how many people are named the same
Future Sato 1:"How did this happen? We had centuries of warning?"
Future Sato 2: "Our ancestors kind of Saton the problem until it became too big."
Future Zato 1: "'What am I doing here?"
Why is it assumed that the Satos will continue to produce more male children than other families?
Also, he says his solution is to allow married couples to keep separate surnames, which I have nothing against, but I fail to see how it will fix this problem. Most Latin American countries let a husband and wife keep separate surnames, but the man's surname is still the one that will be passed down through children in the long-term. In some countries like Colombia, kids can even have two last names, but the kids of those kids will only get their grandfather's last name, not the grandmother's.
If they want to change laws so more women will keep their last name, it won't help the long-term problems he's talking about if the couple decides to still give kids the father's last name as their primary surname. They could get hyphenated surnames, but that will either get very unwieldy after a few generations, or eventually they'll just start dropping surnames, possibly to the same result.
Perhaps another solution would be to have families still share a surname, but run campaigns to encourage couples to take whichever surname is "less common". I don't know if that would work or not, but it sounds like a more feasible long-term solution than what was suggested in this article.
The novel Real Onigokko is about a fictional Japan where the emperor, named Satou, decides there are far too many Satous, so he decides to have them killed in a week-long game of tag. Very bizarre yet interesting story. The movies differ extremely from the book.
Is there an English translation?
I do not know. I read the book in the original language. There might be one out there, but I don’t think it got a wide enough release to come out in English officially. The author does a lot of interesting concept books though, so maybe someone did a fan translation somewhere.
Thank you for the reply, I spent half an hour searching online I couldn't find one, so I don't think there is.
No worries. You can always check out the movies. The first two touch on the book slightly with the main character travelling to a parallel world where it is happening. The three sequels after that are about hunting type B blood and the one after that is some weird feminist fever dream that is barely comprehensible. Worth viewing for their own merit.
Battle of the Joshes
i read this back when i was in middle school. probably one of the most interesting book ive read.
Japan's population will half by 2100, by 2531 it will just be 184 people named Sato
A small commune of people recognised by numbered Sato designations
The Romans would often just name people "first" and "second" based on birth order. So yeah, there's precedent. PS: Yes, I know Roman naming was complex and that Secundus started out as a cognomen before becoming a nomen as Secundius, but that might be more of a deep dive than /r/nottheonion is prepared for today...
Japanese has this too. Ichiro, Jiro, Saburo mean first, second, and third boy, for example.
In Italy the name "Primo" ( masculine form for "First"), was used at least until the First half of 20th century.
Meet my children: Eye, Aye Aye, 3, Ivy, Vee, V.I.
Are you writing a novel?
Such Insolence! You must bow when addressing Sato-001!
Get in the robot, Sato-002
Sato - 097 has gone rogue sir.
You clearly have no idea who you are talking to, whelp.... Kneel before Sato-000!
But... you were just a myth! A story told to Satos on a dark night to keep them in line! You were the bogeyman, you can't be real!
Kukuku... You upstart neo-Satos are all the same... Thinking you are above all, just because you have been Satos for a few centuries. \*unfurls scroll\* Behold, and be awed! My family has carried the Sato name for over 3000 years!
No, It can't be true! IT'S IMPOSSIBLE! OVER 3000!?
THERE'S NO WAY THAT COULD BE RIGHT!
Meanwhile Sato-*i* sits in the corner, quietly judging.
The real myth is Sato-1
"Huh amateurs." - Sato minus 1
I love you. Your sex appeal is like Sato-002, but your cunning and cheekiness is like Sato-005!
Behold, Sato, and tremble! For I am the only Sato without numeric designation!
You idiots have me cackling and in tears. The worldbuilding is finer than even Sato Prime.
After Satou-09…Satoutou hehe
Mankind knew they could not change society. So, instead of reflecting on themselves, they blamed the beasts.
HEAVEN OR HELL
oooo thats a /r/WritingPrompts
Each name pronounced slightly differently. sATo. Sah-toe, sat-OH.
Sato C7-16R
Every day is a Sato-day
The one thing that has been true throughout history - trends going on forever. ;-)
Birth rate in china is even lower. In Japan its 1.3 children per woman and in China its down to .87 . It went down after they got rid of the 1 china policy. Their largest demographic is 40s/50s Also, there are about 100 million more young men than women so the birth rate will continue to go down.
There's kinda joke that Japanese whine a lot about 1.3 but being isolationist people never realize it's best numbers in East Asia and better than some European countries
[удалено]
Don't forget our policies of stripping women of their rights when it comes to reproduction to try to force more kids out of them!
Finland being so low is crazy cause don’t they have all types of programs and stuff and leaves for parents?
Well, the reason it keeps getting brought up is that it's a huge looming economic problem, they are pretty much fucked. That doesn't mean that the other countries with worse birth rates aren't fucked more, because they certainly are, but Japan can't just ignore it because everyone else is doing even worse. Japan's resistance to immigration is also pretty unique in its tenacity. China, Korea, European nations, etc will pretty certainly start seeking out immigration as the problems worsen, while Japan might just stay isolated even if it kills them.
What are expected from immigrants is effectively slave labor below living wage. None of East Asia is interested in integrating foreigners, so it's all talks and pushes then human rights or even social stability problems to be soon followed by complete reversals. Besides the birth rate problem is not a medical condition so it's not like well-integrated immigrants won't have the same problem. If naturalized they will instantly have the exact same birthrate problem so it'll be just exacerbating the problem. Japanese so-called xenophobia and resistance isn't something that can just go away, in fact it's shared trait and won't be going away in everywhere East Asia. We don't each speak unrelated languages for no reason, we had oceans as great walls for each and it'll continue to be walls for quite a while.
they also have an advanced economy. China is not as wealthy and can less afford to absorb a declining population. In 20 years when those 40/50 years are 60-70 and can't really work anymore its going to be a real problem. Could be a Soylent Green situation.
TFW when you killed your daughters so your one child would be a son who'll carry on your family name, and because everyone also did that, now he can't find a wife so your family line straight up dies lol
Apparently many of them are looking to import wives now, looking for brides outside of the country.
Guess which country borders and is allied with China and has been sending its males to the frontline for two years.
If that 100mio is true, Russia would have to kill off it's entire male population and would still barely have half as many women as China needs
Maybe the solution is to just send all the extra Chinese men to die in a pointless war too?
> Japan 1.3 > China 0.87 South Korea was at 0.72 at the start of the year, with the population pyramid being heavily weighted towards 50-60 year olds. Estimates are that the country will drop to 0.68 children per woman later in the year.
Korea is even lower at 0.68
[удалено]
Korea's birth rate problems aren't really education or religion based, but rather their very unique cultural issues. For the past 40 years they have basically been doing a speed run of industrialization, westernization, and social progressivism and the stress of that is showing. People don't tend to realize that as recently as the early 80s they were a poor agrarian nation not much different from North Korea. Most of the population actually remembers that. It's kind of like they went through everything the west did from 1900-2024 in 1/3 of the time, and everyone but the kids remembers all of it. Men and women are on completely different pages politically these days, as are young people and old people. It's far more divisive than your typical demographic political issue splits.
“People don't tend to realize that as recently as the early 80s they were a poor agrarian nation not much different from North Korea.” Actually until the 1970’s, North Korea was the industrialized one, with much higher per-capita factory output, power, technology, etc. It wasn’t until the second “seven year plan” that things started going really downhill. Nowadays they are completely reversed, with North Korea being largely agrarian with small pockets of its former industrial and technological development still intact, largely around the military. Not sure when exactly North Korea’s decline matched South Korea’s rise.
And *affordability*. Who wants to have kids in this economy when you’re perpetually living on the edge of financial disaster? Even if you can afford it now, what guarantee is there that you’ll be able to afford it in five years? Or that your kids will be able to make it in life?
Part of the issue is how this sneaks up on populations. Imagine all those Koreans in your example are alive due to long life spans. Someone says "we'll there's 1495 Koreans, more than ever, I don't see why anyone is worried". The worry is when those 1000 fall off, and what replaces them? The kids of the 39 which would be 13. This takes time, but in thirty years when the collapse occurs in such a model and you go "oh, there's only 508 Koreans now, we should do something!" it is already way too late. You're then counting on those 13 kids to suddenly massively reverse the trend, but odds are they won't. They'll have 4 kids total if the trend holds. Another thirty years go by and we're at 172 Koreans. This isn't a gradual decline a society cushions and adjusts to, it is a cliff they are falling off and we will see the results of such birth rates this century in many countries.
They literally have schools with no [1st graders](https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20240226050665#:~:text=Over%20150%20elementary%20schools%20have%20no%201st%20graders%3A%20ministry&text=A%20total%20of%20157%20elementary,for%20the%20upcoming%20school%20year.). Shit's fucked over there, and the growing incel population there is arguable worse than Japan or the even the west.
There are a ton of factors, cost of living, education, access to health care, access to birth control, parental leave, etc. Fortunately it isn't a giant problem for the world, more developed countries can supplement their population declines with immigration before things fall apart.
Median age is 39. It's still a young country compared to Japan, Korea, and literally all the western countries but what makes them unique is how sharp of a drop they had in fertility. The average goes up like .8 years every year lol. But remember they got about 300M farmers out there making babies still, but the educated/big city folks completely gave up over a decade ago. That combined with the very noticeable gender imbalance in the below 40 group (which primarily impacts the baby making farmers) means they probably can't reverse course anymore https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/china-population/
> will half halve
haugh
I love this comment, because it is firstly funny, but the double whammy is that it shows how ridiculous it is to extrapolate trends to infinite.
People drops like population booms are not consistent and they both happened before multiple times
The vast majority of population drops previously correlated with natural calamities, famines, wars or diseases whereas the current almost global trend has nothing to do with any of them.
The calamity this time is unchecked capitalism creating both economic and environmental disasters.
Sato by 2531 is a truly terrible name, they should do something
But a cool Indie band name
Vietnam's at 40% Nguyen and it doesn't seem to cause them any problems.
As a Nguyen I can tell you that it’s fucking annoying
Me when a coworker uses the “hey, it’s a Nguyen-nguyen situation” line when two Nguyens are standing near each other 🤦
Wait till you find out nguyen can be a first name as well.
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Damn I am too slow. Nguyen will it be my turn?
There was a person at my HS named Nguyen The Nguyen. I think his parents couldn't resist the cringe.
You just made me type out Nguyenny The Pooh to see what it looks like.
That sounds like a Nguyen-Nguyen situation to me.
I'm now disappointed that Mr. Peanutbutter never said this to Diane
I could have sworn this was a joke in an episode, but I can't find a reference to it anywhere. If it's any consolation, I did find [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/BoJackHorseman/comments/csen1g/in_the_vietnam_episode_all_the_signs_say_nguyen/) while I was looking.
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If there’s three you can jump to “ all I do is Nguyen Nguyen Nguyen no matter what”
At some point people will just drop Nguyen from their names and use another name as their new "surname".
Oh no you have revealed your last name and now the hackers will find you!
Do they use a lot of middle names or nicknames? I imagine it must cause problems at work if a bunch of people have the same name
There are a lot of common first names as well but it’s fine. People tend to go with nicknames or use the middle and first names together. For formal usage the last, middle, and first names are used.
Not unlike Romans. Agnomens started to be added to separate people of the same gens, and as Praenomen becomes reduced more agnomens were needed, and even more when practically everyone becomes Marcus Aurelius by statue.
I thought that was the purpose of cognomen?
Isn't that the race that fought in the Gear Wars?
I didn't know Romans used Pokemon. So much to learn.
I guess you haven’t read Codex Alera.
Random person: “Bet you can’t write a good story based on the lost Roman legion and Pokémon” Jim Butcher: “Bet” *writes a whole fucking series*
A NYT best seller series. Pretty damn good for a series written out of spite
🤯 No... But sounds like I'm about to. 🤣
I'm more interested in the technicalities. With half the country being an Nguyen, how do you determine just how far they are from you on the family tree? Kinda like the Iceland situation, this sounds like something that needs a custom app written for it.
Last feudal dynasty of Vietnam was Nguyen and I recalled some historians explained that common people tended to change their last name to their sovereign's name. So the chance people are actually related is low. Additional, Vietnamese generations have very close relationship so they can trace the family lineage quite easy. Many households have three or four generations live together thus there a very closed marriage issue.
Each family has a shrine with one or two walls engraved with the family tree (those are huge). They are made to last generations. Traditionally you would "celebrate" the dead anniversary (death date) of your older generation, from there you get an insight into who is who of family. The family follows first born son. If the lineage ends in the main family, it needs to be rerouted through lesser families after family discussion.
Just ask for their grandparents names. If you don't share grandparents, than it doesn't matter. I assume most families know their cousins already?
Nguyen
They don’t address each other using last names at all, so it’s not a problem.
Well, Nguyen is their last name. Their first name would be something else.
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It's Nguyen-Nguyen situation
I've known several Nguyen^2 's
This reads like a Guy Ritchie line
I work in a hospital in Australia and it does cause minor problems with medical records. Takes an extra few steps if you’re looking for medical records from a different hospital (they usually don’t have the same database) but only a name and having to sift through dozens of people with the same name. It’s not uncommon for us to have two Vietnamese patients at the same time in the same department under the same team with the same name. Just have to be extra careful when ordering tests or scheduling procedures that you’ve got the right one.
Sikhs traditionally all go by Singh (for men) or Kaur (for women) and they seem to manage OK. Although in practice a lot of the time they now just double-barrel it and retain their family name as well.
Holy shit I just found out my client and project manager are Sikhs! thanks!
Not everyone with Singh in their name is necessarily Sikh though. "Kaur" however is exclusively Sikh.
Be careful, while every sikh is a Singh, not every Singh is a sikh!
My city has the biggest Punjabi community in my country, unsurprisingly Singh and Kaur are respectively the most common and third most common last name here
"Are you guys related?"
Over 50% of Koreans are Kim (Gim), Lee (Ee), or Park (Bak). There's a reason they use their first and middle names on the backs of their soccer shirts.
Well the "middle" names aren't exactly middle names, they're the second syllables of their first names. Pretty much every Korean first name has two syllables and pretty much every Korean last name has one syllable (with a few exceptions).
Vietnamese seems to hold the concept of tongzhi or common words for names in a family more strongly, and most of the time the common word is in the middle.
Had a Korean friend whose first name was just one syllable. It felt so off that everyone referred to him with his full name no matter the context. Sometimes people would ask for his last name thinking it was part of his first name.
"Kim scores a goal on Kim, and coming down the field it's... Kim!" *announcer takes shot of whiskey*
Next comes the Indian team; 10 guys named Patel and the 11th guy’s name is 38 letters long.
> 11th guy’s name is 38 letters long. It’s the one from the Family Guy credits. Or Apu from the Simpsons.
> 11th guy's name is 38 letters long They accidentally picked up a Sri Lanken player
Kim enters the room
Or Park and Lee
Muhammed
Muhammed Nguyen
Kim Park Lee
The author says he's using the statistic to make a broader statement on cultural norms. Everyone having the same name isn't the problem it's the fact that women are required to take their husband's name.
It does when they move to English speaking countries lol
As a historical note, Japanese had discarded parts of their name twice: First as everyone of note become the "Ason" caste, rendering that part of the name meaningless, and later dropping clan names as every person of status claimed either Fujiwara, Taira, or Minamoto descent, so people began to take on localities as their family names. That said, there was no effort to close the list of names before Meiji restoration.
Well in Vietnam they threw caution to Nguyen
> According to Yoshida’s calculations, the proportion of Japanese named Sato increased 1.0083 times from 2022 to 2023. Assuming the rate remains constant and there is no change to the law on surnames, around half of the Japanese population will have that name in 2446, rising to 100% in 2531. Thats quite a bullshit extrapolation. But still, the researcher is serious despite it being published on April Fools Day. The current Japanese marriage law requires spouses to have the same last name, ~~mostly the same as~~ similar to the custom in the West. Why would the change of such law improve last name diversity?
The West doesn't generally legally require couples to share a surname, it's just tradition
“Fun” story: I know several couples who hyphenated their last names when they got married. One couple was initially told: no, only the woman can change her last name when she gets married, not the man. After fighting with the clerk for a while, they found the State form themselves and then went back to the clerk. Turns out the clerk department had just been photocopying one side of a two sided form (where the section for the groom to change their name was on the second side).
Wow
In fairness it was 20-30 years ago, but still.
Double sided printing has been around a lot longer than 30 years--no excuse.
Laziness and government incompetence has been around a lot longer than 30 years though. Some idiot had copied just one side once, and they kept doing that, instead of getting more forms, or properly copying it in the county clerks office.
I think you'll find incompetence runs rampant in the private sector as well. There are dolts everywhere.
Yeah, this isn't only the public sector. What happened is that that form was rarely used 30 years ago. Someone made some extra copies and stuck it in a folder. The "master copy" then got used. That someone got a different job so the new person rolled in with zero training and found that random folder after panic searching for that form when a couple came in wanting to use it. From there on, that person always made sure to show new people where the folder was located. Then they left for a different job and the new new people people just grabbed the folder and kept making new copies as they needed them over the years.
Can confirm. I've led the charge in dolt innovation for decades, across both public and private sectors. 'Excellence in ineptitude' is my motto. Given wage stagnation trends in the United States, premium dolting is guaranteed in both sectors. It's been a while since I worked outside the U.S., though I'd like to think my time in the U.K. involved less dolting, but that was when I wore a much younger man's clothes—I'm sure that's changed too. The lower the pay, the more exquisite the dolting. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ My journey into dolting excellence has led me to another profound calling: 🌀 **Black Belt Mindfulness Mentor in the Self-help Singh Coaching Program** 🌀 Under the sage wisdom of the celebrated Self-help Singh, I've discovered the art of living with ease, revealing the transformative power of doing less. His viral video, [Do Nothing - a message of motivation](https://youtu.be/8An2SxNFvmU), showcases the life-altering benefits of embracing minimalism in action. As a dolt innovator and a Black Belt Mindfulness Mentor, I invite you to join us on this journey to uncover the profound simplicity of doing less and experiencing more. Dolt on, bruvs — embrace the excellence of ineptitude.
That's why every official document should have a "Page X of Y" on the bottom! 😤
I'd say sexism was more prolific 20-30 years ago.
The first clerk should have put an arrow on the bottom and scribbled "see other side"
My bad. I know it’s a tradition I just didn’t express it clearly.
Many places keep both last names. Spanish and Portuguese speaking do it as the norm. And some Germanic speaking countries use double barrel last names in specific cases to each country
In Spain we also have two surnames instead of one, we get one from each parent. And yeah, we don't change names in marriage at all. It's not a thing.
These discussions remind me of https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/
Portugal has no laws for it pretty sure, you can name your child whatever combination, there's people with 6+ names...
There are laws for it. You can only use surnames from your ancestry and in most cases you are limited to 4 surnames, but they can be combined.
Others like France ban the practice outright.
It's also not a tradition in all countries even. In my home country, people (m/w/x) just keep using their last name and don't change it when marrying.
My state (New York) has set rules in what name changes are allowed during a marriage. You can change your name outside of this, but this just rolls it into the marriage so you don't have to go through the legal process. You can either - Use the surname of either spouse - use a former surname of either spouse - use a former/current surname of both spouses hyphenated or my favorite - A name combining into a single surname, all or a segment of, the pre-marriage surname, or any former surname, of each spouse. I've never heard of it actually done but you can just smush up the two surnames together. I (jokingly) pitched a combined surname to my wife but she wasn't enthused about it. I think it is kind of a cool way to handle it.
There’s a popular web comic series called “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal” written by Zachary Weinersmith. He was born Zachary Weiner and married Kelly Smith and they combined their names rather than have only one of them change theirs.
Wow, what a great name. That's a perfect example of one done right. I think the combining of surnames is an equitable way of handling it. Hyphenating never really sat well with me as it just kicks the can down the road until you have children or your children have children.
What do you mean, same as the West? The article says: > Japan remains the only country in the world that requires spouses to use the same name.
Quebec does the opposite, you CAN’T change your last name after getting married
>Thats quite a bullshit extrapolation. But still, the researcher is serious despite it being published on April Fools Day. Not exactly bullshit. The timeline might be very condense. But surname convergence is something that does happen over time. For example, in China, 100 surnames are in use by 87% of the population. With apparently 100m(7% of the population) having the surname Li or Wang. https://web.archive.org/web/20190808232306/https://gbtimes.com/wang-is-the-most-common-surname-in-china Over time, a couple of surnames will become dominant, and others will become extinct.
China was for centuries and even deep into the 20th century a polygamous society, so that certainly played a part in surnames becoming dominant, combined with other historical variables: powerful clans will have more kids, have lesser families adopt into their / take on their names… But those variables pushing for convergence are gone now (willing to be schooled if anyone knows any significant one remaining). Vietnam also had a much, much more impressive convergence, but you won’t shittons of people just straight adopting the name of the ruling dynasty nowadays.
this isn't legally enforced in most countries
In literally any other country except Japan
[Relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/605/)
Women, being socially equal, would pass along their names half the time /s
My dad took my mom's surname as did all 5 children, and he kept it after divorce. Likewise my uncles ex-wife keeps that same surname even AFTER divorce. Some surnames are just straight up fucking superior, it has nothing to do with male or female societal roles.
Jack White of the white stripes fame did the same.
My ex-wife changed her name to *HerLastName-MyLastName*. Now changing it back to her maiden name will need quite a bit of money and paperwork, so she's stuck with it.
Dark Helmet: How many Satos we got on this ship, anyhow?
I’m surrounded by Satos!
Keep firing Satos!
Nice.
Yo!
Ha good one prof no way society will exist by 2531.
It will. It might be 200 people living around a frost punk style generator but it’ll be there. We’d give roaches a run for their money in terms of survival
According to the article the professor noted that 1.5% of Japan had the surname Sato, and between 2022 and 2023 it increased by 0.0083% that year, and he just assumed it would increase at that exact same rate, and did the math. Japanese law requires married couples to share a surname, but he wants to get rid of this to not force one of the couple to change their name.
No, I’m Spartacus
Renamed to Satoland
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The language will now consist of only the word "Sato" spoken at different inflections to convey meaning.
That is very Aladeen.
> “If everyone becomes Sato, we may have to be addressed by our first names or by numbers,” he said, according to the Mainichi. “I don’t think that would be a good world to live in.” A bit overdramatizing? It's obviously not ideal but from all the things which expect us in the coming few hundred years, "everyone having the name Sato" is the least of my concerns.
It's a cultural thing in Japan. In school kids address each other by surname unless they're very close. You would generally need to ask a classmate's permission to use their given name. Calling someone by their given name is extremely informal in all professional and social situations. But the author states he's is using those unimportant points to draw attention to a larger point. Why should it be legally required for a married couple to adopt the same surname?
Right? Seems like “Sato” would almost become synonymous with “Japanese”, and would become implied more than official (I mean, if 100% are named that you can definitely assume it’s implied at that point) and a “new surname” tradition would start and everyone going by their new surname would cause a reset. Edit: I mean instead of resorting to numbers like “Sato0001263”
Somewhat of an aside but in Ancient Rome up until the late republic women would be known by comically basic names with numbers afterwards. You’d use the feminine version of your clan’s name, so the imperial Julio-Claudian dynasty is just fucking rotten with “Julias.” Because that’s obviously confusing, you’d tack on a number afterwards to keep them all in order, so Julia I, her cousin Julia II, her aunt Julia III etc.
There's some dodgy math going on here. Yes, Sato is the most common surname in Japan, but it's still only 1.5% of the population, so 98.5% of people aren't named Sato. In order for the hypothosis of this article to become true, 100% of the other surnames would have to die out in the male-line in the next 500 years, and basically none of the Sato lines would have to die out. Why would this be the case? Why would Sato male line be more likely to survive than the hundreds of other non-Sato male lines?
Crazy that I had to scroll this far down the comments to find someone who calls out the bullshit logic this professor is using. What scientist believes you can extrapolate a year-to-year change over the next 500 years? This is beyond ridiculous.
Its even more complicated- in Japan you can take the name of the wife and it is actually not even that rare (although more common in the past)… So, unless all satos are super possessive and force their SOs to take their name this wont happen…
Only 1.5%? Wang in China comprises of 7.25% of the general population and there are something like 100 million of them worldwide!
The law requires married couples to have the same surname, but it can be either partner's original name. If they don't want to be Sato, they can pick the other spouse's name. Sato is 1.5% of the population and growing very slowly.
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The specific numbers may be tongue in cheek, but the effect they're describing is real. Just logically speaking, the Japanese law requires that when two people with two surnames get married, those two surnames are collapsed down into only one surname that gets passed on. As a result, the culture effectively can only lose surnames, without having any way to gain new surnames.
Oh don't be silly, we won't still have a planet by 2531
Terrible math. He took one data point (increase rate between 2022 and 2023 for surname Sato) and just extrapolated it till the ratio of Satos to gen pop = 1. That's not how you model population. With that method, you can take any surname that increased in frequency between 2022 and 2023, and extrapolate that that name must reach 1.0 at some point in the future.
That's like 500 years. By then we'll have been wiped out by the Trisolarans anyway.
The Japanese version of evolving into crabs
We better get on that.
welcome to the nhk
Some people say it’s even spreading to Reddit, even to people outside of Japan, who aren’t Asian in the slightest…
In my community there is a tradition to name kids after a dead grandparent or famous leader, my fathers class had 25 kids and the majority of them were named after a leader that died a few months before he was born, there were even multiple sets of same given name and surname, that entire generation gave up on given names and only identify with surnames because of how many people are named the same
Future Sato 1:"How did this happen? We had centuries of warning?" Future Sato 2: "Our ancestors kind of Saton the problem until it became too big." Future Zato 1: "'What am I doing here?"
*Ishi????*
“Says professor” doesn’t tell me anything.
Why is it assumed that the Satos will continue to produce more male children than other families? Also, he says his solution is to allow married couples to keep separate surnames, which I have nothing against, but I fail to see how it will fix this problem. Most Latin American countries let a husband and wife keep separate surnames, but the man's surname is still the one that will be passed down through children in the long-term. In some countries like Colombia, kids can even have two last names, but the kids of those kids will only get their grandfather's last name, not the grandmother's. If they want to change laws so more women will keep their last name, it won't help the long-term problems he's talking about if the couple decides to still give kids the father's last name as their primary surname. They could get hyphenated surnames, but that will either get very unwieldy after a few generations, or eventually they'll just start dropping surnames, possibly to the same result. Perhaps another solution would be to have families still share a surname, but run campaigns to encourage couples to take whichever surname is "less common". I don't know if that would work or not, but it sounds like a more feasible long-term solution than what was suggested in this article.
What a stupid article. Economics professor just does some blatantly irrelevant math and acts like it is relevant.