Higashi
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Japanese: ‘east’ (also read Azuma), a common place name in Japan, held as a surname by several different families
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/hiˈɡɑʃi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Higashi is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- BRBrazil1 in 185K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 290K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 1.4M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 91 (measured from records)
- 1 in 185K (inferred from the name graph)
1,149 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Brazil
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘east’ (also read Azuma), a common place name in Japan, held as a surname by several different families.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Higashi is read(measured from records)
Higashi is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Japanese46%
‘east’ (also read Azuma), a common place name in Japan, held as a surname by several different families.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
- English36%
The (more prestigious) right-hand side of the banzuke.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Portuguese11%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Higashi in Portuguese.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Higashi counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 1,149 | 1 in 290K | 1.2K | Higashi | 91 |
| BR Brazil | 1,147 | 1 in 185K | 1.1K | Higashi | 77 |
| AR Argentina | 14 | 1 in 3.2M | 14 | Higashi | 16 |
| ES Spain | 9 | 1 in 5.6M | 9 | — | 2 |
| CH Switzerland | 6 | 1 in 1.4M | 6 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 3 | 1 in 3.9M | 3 | — | — |
1,149 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Yōichi Higashib. 1934JPfilm director
- Masao Higashib. 1958JPJapanese author and editor
- Satoru Higashib. 1963JPJapanese boxer
- Saori Higashib. 1969JPJapanese voice actress
- Akira Higashib. 1972JPJapanese ski jumper
- Koichi Higashib. 1978JPJapanese association football player
- Kotaro Higashib. 1989JPJapanese soccer player
- Kanae Higashib. 1989JPJapanese designer
- Keigo Higashib. 1990JPJapanese association football player
- Shunki Higashib. 2000JPJapanese association football player
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 14 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.2K | #20,397 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.1K | #22,404 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.1K | #8,175 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.1K | #24,212 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 14 | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 9 | #126,713 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 6 | #89,778 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 3 | #128,124 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Higashi mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘east’ (also read Azuma), a common place name in Japan, held as a surname by several different families. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Higashi?
- A machine transcription gives /hiˈɡɑʃi/ (IPA) for Japanese.
- In which country does Higashi have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.1 thousand people named Higashi, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled higashi.
- Where is Higashi most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Higashi is densest in Brazil — about 1 in 185 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Higashi?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,149 people named Higashi in 2010, about 1 in 290 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Higashi?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/higashiThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Higashi”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.