Anime’s growing international popularity is affecting name choices overseas.
Popular storytelling tropes and traditions mean there’s often a degree of overlap among anime protagonists, but the characters that leave the deepest impressions tend to bring their traits together in some singular way that makes them stand out from the pack. So while, for example, anime has plenty of hot-blooded martial artist heroes, there’s only one Naruto, right?
Except, actually, in Indonesia, there are well over 100 Narutos. And no, this isn’t the result of somehow amplifying the power of bunshin/shadow cloning techniques, but part of a trend of actual people in Indonesia having the name of anime characters.
Earlier this month, Indonesia’s Directorate General of Population and Civil Registration (a.k.a. Dukcapil), part of the Ministry of Home Affairs, released its latest census data and found a surprising number of residents whose names clearly come from the anime/manga world. The most common anime name among the people of Indonesia is Uzumaki, with 190 people using Naruto’s surname as their name, while another 157 Indonesian residents are named Naruto. Hailing from the same series, the Dukcapil found 158 Sasukes and 152 Uchihas, creating totals of 347 people who owe their name to “Naruto Uzumaki” and 310 to “Sasuke Uchiha.” The census also turned up 60 people named after Boruto, Naruto’s son and star of his own sequel spinoff.
Doraemon also had a strong showing for inspiring names, with 181 people named Nobita, after the series’ lead human character. There are also 16 people in Indonesia named Doraemon, and another 8 share the name of Nobita’s wealthy associate Suneo.
Pirate saga One Piece’s popularity has resulted in 79 people named Luffy and 37 named Usopp. 65 people are named Shinchan, as in the titular tyke of Crayon Shin-chan, and Indonesia is also home to 23 people named Inuyasha.
To be clear, these tallies aren’t for people who use the anime character names as a professional name, nickname, or alias. The census counted official, legally registered names, meaning that any passports, driver’s licenses, or other official forms of ID issued to these people really will list their name as “Naruto” or “Inuyasha.”
The publicly released census data doesn’t seem to account for whether or not the people with these names are native Indonesians, but it’s unlikely that many of them are ethnically Japanese foreign residents. Naruto isn’t really a name that’s used in Japan, and Uzumaki is an incredibly rare family name, with estimates that there are fewer than a dozen Uzumakis in all of Japan. Sasuke is an actual given name, but one that’s very old-fashioned (we’re talking “immediately calls up images of ninja from hundreds of years ago” old-fashioned), and Uchiha doesn’t appear to be an actual surname name. The closest name out of those listed above that you’d be likely find an actual Japanese person with would be “Shin,” but even then, no Japanese person would make the affectionately diminutive suffix “-chan” part of their legal name.
Taking all that into consideration, it appears that these names really are the result of anime’s popularity in Indonesia, and with the medium’s global fanbase continuing to grow, we might be seeing even more anime names in the real world in years to come.
Source: Jiji, Yomiuri Shimbun, International Business Times, Myoji Yurai.net (1, 2)
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