Study finds hundreds of people in Indonesia legally named after Naruto, Inuyasha, other anime stars

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.