What is the significance of number of Kanji in a name?


There are several one-character surnames: [林]{はやし} [森]{もり} [堤]{つつみ}

Most surnames have two-characters: [鈴木]{すずき} [山田]{やまだ} [藤井]{ふじい} [酒井]{さかい}
[松村]{まつむら}

A few surnames have three-characters: [佐々木]{ささき} [長谷川]{はせがわ} [五十住]{いそずみ}
[中小路]{なかこうじ}

It may be an incorrect assumption, but save for 佐々木 and 長谷川 it seems like
people with 3-character names tend to be the most likely to have a pre-Meiji
era name (have been upper class prior to that era).

Is there any reason behind the number of characters in a surname being longer
for the upper class? Is it just coincidence?




I think you are thinking of some distinctive names used by nobles and bishops.
Some (many?) of them have distinctive suffix like 〜[小路]{こうじ}, 〜[坊]{(の)ぼう},
〜[寺]{じ}, and so on, and because of these suffixes, the names tend to get
longer for them.

Note that there's a plenty of two-character surnames, such as [徳川]{とくがわ},
[藤原]{ふじわら}, [近衛]{このえ}, etc. that are used by nobles, and peasants also
sometimes use a prefix/suffix such as [大]{おお}/[小]{こ}〜 (such as [大曽根]{おおそね},
[小日向]{こひゅうが/こひなだ}), so I don't think one could say the upper class had a
longer surname.

**The following section added after a comment by jmac**

As I wrote, I just don't agree with your premise that the upper class had a
longer surname. After all, when we say everyone got their 名字 in 明治 era, it's
not like a whole bunch of new names were suddenly invented out of thin air.
The majority of the names were pre-existing names.

Take a look at
[this](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B9%B3%E5%AE%89%E6%99%82%E4%BB%A3%E3%81%AE%E4%BA%BA%E7%89%A9%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%A7)
for example, and you see a long list of two character names that are nobles
and samurais. Same for [war lords in the Edo
period](http://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category%3a%E6%B1%9F%E6%88%B8%E3%81%AE%E5%A4%A7%E5%90%8D).
I think it'd be hard to claim that they have a higher average character count
in their surnames than people today.

By the way, 長谷川 [goes back a long
time](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%95%B7%E8%B0%B7%E5%B7%9D%E6%B0%8F), and
so does
[佐々木](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BD%90%E3%80%85%E6%9C%A8%E6%B0%8F). And
you might be also intereted in playing with <http://myoji-yurai.net/> or
<http://home.r01.itscom.net/morioka/myoji/best200.html> that gives you some
information about the origins of those names --- can't vouch for their
accuracies, though.

