Nishikawa
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ‘western river’; mostly found in western Japan and the Ryukyu Islands
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/niʃiˈkɑwə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nishikawa is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in Japan.
- JPJapan
- BRBrazil
- USUnited States
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘western river’; mostly found in western Japan and the Ryukyu Islands. A less common, alternative pronunciation, Saikawa, is from eastern Japan. A few bearers are of samurai origin.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
- JPJapan
- USUnited States
- BRBrazil
- CACanada
- MXMexico
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
- Jitokusaib. 1671JPnot in their usual nameprintmaker
- Katsumi Nishikawab. 1918JPJapanese film director
- Koya Nishikawab. 1942JPJapanese politician
- Kiyoshi Nishikawab. 1946JPJapanese politician and actor
- Norio Nishikawab. 1951JPJapanese actor, owarai tarento and tarento
- Takanori Nishikawab. 1970JPJapanese musician
- Miwa Nishikawab. 1974JPJapanese film director
- Shusaku Nishikawab. 1986JPJapanese association football player
- Haruki Nishikawab. 1992JPJapanese baseball player
- Jun NishikawaJPJapanese mangaka and illustrator
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 16 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 961 | #26,703 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 949 | #25,902 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 887 | #25,991 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 729 | #12,181 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 64 | #43,667 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 16 | #54,672 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 9 | #126,713 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 6 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 6 | #184,441 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | — | 5 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 4 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 4 | #232,027 |
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
- Where does the name Nishikawa come from?
- ‘western river’; mostly found in western Japan and the Ryukyu Islands. A less common, alternative pronunciation, Saikawa, is from eastern Japan. A few bearers are of samurai origin. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Nishikawa?
- A machine transcription gives /niʃiˈkɑwə/ (IPA) for Japanese.
- What does the name Nishikawa mean?
- Recorded meaning: ‘western river’; mostly found in western Japan and the Ryukyu Islands.
- In which country does Nishikawa have the most bearers?
- Nishikawa is most frequently recorded in Japan.
What do you want to know about Nishikawa?
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/nishikawaThe 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, “Nishikawa”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.