Yamamoto
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Japanese surname meaning literally ‘person who lives among or at the foot of the mountains’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/jɑmɑˈmoʊtoʊ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Yamamoto is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country.
- BRBrazil1 in 27K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 44K
- FIFinland1 in 53K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Yamamoto itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 62 (measured from records)
- 1 in 27K (inferred from the name graph)
7,771 people
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Brazil
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Japanese surname meaning literally ‘person who lives among or at the foot of the mountains’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Yamamoto 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.
7,771 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 2000; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)
Yamamoto is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A surname from Japanese, one of the 10 most common in Japan.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Yamamoto Tsunetomob. 1659JPsamurai (1659-1719)
- Yamamoto Gonnohyoeb. 1852JPPrime Minister of Japan (1852-1933)
- Isoroku Yamamotob. 1884JPJapanese Marshal Admiral (1884–1943)
- Shūgorō Yamamotob. 1903JPJapanese writer
- 山本悍右b. 1914JPnot in their usual nameJapanese avant-garde poet-photographer, editor and publisher (1914–1987)
- Yōji Yamamotob. 1943JPJapanese fashion designer (born 1943)
- Sanae Takaichib. 1961JPnot in their usual nameJapanese politician, Prime Minister of Japan since 2025
- Hiro Yamamotob. 1961USJapanese-American musician
- Maria Yamamotob. 1981JPJapanese voice actress and singer
- Sakon Yamamotob. 1982JPJapanese racecar driver
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 30 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 7.8K | #1,587 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 7.7K | #4,289 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 7.5K | #4,702 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7K | #4,916 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 172 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 106 | #12,258 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 30 | #35,193 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 28 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Yamamoto mean, and where does it come from?
- Japanese surname meaning literally ‘person who lives among or at the foot of the mountains’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Yamamoto?
- A machine transcription gives /jɑmɑˈmoʊtoʊ/ (IPA) for Japanese.
- In which country does Yamamoto have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 7.8 thousand people named Yamamoto, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Yamamoto most common?
- Yamamoto is densest in Brazil, where the national register counts about 1 in 27 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Yamamoto?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 7,771 people named Yamamoto, about 1 in 27 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Yamamoto?
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/yamamotoThe 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, “Yamamoto”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.