[1] Famous people with one-character surnames include Atari (中) Kōsuke, Hajime (元) Chitose and Nobori (昇) Shomu.
Although the Amami Islands are now part of Kagoshima Prefecture in the Kyūshū region, the inhabitants share much cultural heritage with Okinawans to the south.
In 1609, Satsuma Domain of southern Kyūshū invaded Ryūkyū, forcing the kingdom to cede the Amami Islands.
In 1726 Tabata Sabunji (田畑佐文仁) of Amami Ōshima became the first islander to be allowed to use a surname in recognition of his development of new rice fields.
The second one was Miyazato (宮里) of Kikai Island, who was given the surname of Sumie (澄江) around 1746 because he received education at his own expense to become a Chinese interpreter.
The situation changed in 1783 when the one-character surname Shi (芝) was given to Saneo (実雄) from a wealthy family of Amami Ōshima.
According to a record of the Shi family, the ruler of Satsuma Shimazu Shigehide initially opposed to allowing islanders to use surnames.
[3] Historian Yuge Masami considers that this peculiar policy was part of Satsuma's effort to strengthen camouflage against China.
As islanders were sometimes drifted to China, Satsuma even provided a list of potential questions and answers on Chinese inquiry.
It may be worth noting that in domestic affairs Ryūkyū's Yukatchu used two- or three-character toponyms as their family names (kamei), which had no Amami equivalent.
With increasing contacts with mainland Japan, however, many islanders felt it inconvenient to use their peculiar surnames as they were often misidentified as Chinese or Koreans and met discrimination.