Posted By:	Brian Roberts
	Email:
	Subject:	Re: Tanaka in Nebraska
	Post Date:	June 16, 1998 at 10:06:32
	Message URL:	http://genforum.genealogy.com/tanaka/messages/2.html
	Forum:	Tanaka Family Genealogy Forum
	Forum URL:	http://genforum.genealogy.com/tanaka/

Tanaka, like many Japanese surnames, has many origins. Commoners of Japan had no family names until 1872, and many took names describing where they lived. Tanaka means literally "in the middle of the ricefields." It can be translated as "Fields." And possession of a family crest, or mon, doesn't prove ancestry. Anyone who has the name may use the mon. Of course, there must have been some noble Tanaka family that originated the mon.