If your name happens to be Makoto Sato, the chances of you rising through the corporate ranks all the way to the top are probably higher than others.
That's according to results from a survey on the most prevalent names for company presidents among 2.6 million corporations in the country, released Wednesday by Tokyo Shoko Research.
The survey found there were 174 Makoto Satos at the helm of firms in Japan as of December, followed by 168 Takashi Suzukis and 151 Shigeru Suzukis.
The name Makoto, meaning "sincere," also proved the most popular first name among company presidents, possessed by no less than 11,267 of them.
Other common first names of company presidents were Hiroshi ("erudite") at 9,176; Shigeru ("ebullient") at 9,146; Takashi ("prosperous") at 8,378, and Osamu ("educated") at 8,055.
The research institute reasoned that the popularity of Makoto is due partly to the fact that the name was the most popular among baby boys annually during 18 years between 1957 and 1978.
As for surnames, Sato, Suzuki and Tanaka occupied the top three spots, accounting for 34,038, 32,594 and 25,909 presidents, respectively.
By region, Sato ranked first in Hokkaido and in the Tohoku region. Suzuki, meanwhile, proved to be the most prevalent family name in the Kanto region, as did Kato and Ito in the Chubu region.
Tanaka was the most common surname of a president in Kyushu.