Nagano
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Japanese: ‘long field’; from a very common place name
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/nɑˈɡɑnoʊ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nagano is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country.
- BRBrazil1 in 229K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 970K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 2.1M
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.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- Sources
- 55 (measured from records)
- 1 in 229K (inferred from the name graph)
926 people
Highest-authority source
Brazil
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘long field’; from a very common place name. The name, which is listed in the Shinsen shojiroku, is written in two ways, in roughly equal numbers, one being found mostly in eastern Japan and the other in western Japan; both are also found in Okinawa Island. Many bearers are unrelated; some are of Sakanoue, Goto, or Kikuchi descent.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Nagano is read(measured from records)
Nagano is one spelling over 4 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.
- Japanese60%
‘long field’; from a very common place name. The name, which is listed in the Shinsen shojiroku, is written in two ways, in roughly equal numbers, one being found mostly in eastern Japan and the other in western Japan; both are also found in Okinawa Island. Many bearers are unrelated; some are of Sakanoue, Goto, or Kikuchi descent.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
- English18%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Nagano in English.
- Portuguese12%
Nagano (a city and prefecture of Japan)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish5.9%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Nagano in Spanish.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Nagano 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | 926 | 1 in 229K | 926 | Nagano | 55 |
| US United States | 343 | 1 in 970K | 452 | Nagano | 44 |
| ES Spain | 12 | 1 in 4.2M | 12 | — | 2 |
| AR Argentina | 11 | 1 in 4.1M | 11 | Nagano | 20 |
| CH Switzerland | 4 | 1 in 2.1M | 4 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 3 | 1 in 3.9M | 3 | — | — |
926 people counted by IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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 2020; 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Nagano is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Polish, vocative singular of nagana
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, pilsēta Japānā ("Nagano"), Honsju salas centrālajā daļā, prefektūras administratīvais centrs, 377600 iedzīvotāju (2015. g.)
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Osami Naganob. 1880JPFleet admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy (1880-1947)
- Shigeichi Naganob. 1925JPJapanese photographer and cinematographer (1925-2019)
- Sukenari Naganob. 1939JPJapanese politician
- Kent Naganob. 1951USAmerican conductor (1951-)
- Mayumi Naganob. 1959JPJapanese novelist
- Mamoru Naganob. 1960JPJapanese mechanic designer, character designer, cartoonist (1960-)
- Hiroshi Naganob. 1972JPJapanese actor
- Akira Naganob. 1975JPJapanese professional wrestler (1975-)
- Mei Naganob. 1999JPJapanese actress (born 1999)
- Fuka Naganob. 1999JPJapanese 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 17 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 926 | #9,961 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 452 | #50,074 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 414 | #48,021 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 343 | #59,017 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 12 | #109,635 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 11 | — |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 4 | #118,617 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 3 | #127,543 |
| 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 Nagano mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘long field’; from a very common place name. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Nagano?
- A machine transcription gives /nɑˈɡɑnoʊ/ (IPA) for Japanese.
- In which country does Nagano have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 926 people named Nagano, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nagano.
- Where is Nagano most common?
- Nagano is densest in Brazil, where the national register counts about 1 in 229 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Nagano?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 926 people named Nagano, about 1 in 229 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Nagano?
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/naganoThe 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, “Nagano”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.