Isekai by Moonlight

[Labster]

Aw, now I discover this... after making "Dr. Mizuno wants the Mizuno name to continue" a minor plot point.

Mizuno is the most common real-life surname of all of the Senshi. While it isn't blatantly common, it isn't rare, either -- Tuxedo Unmasked says it's the 105th-most-common surname in Japan. (Check out that page anyway; the list it provides also says where in Japan one is most likely to find somebody with each particular surname.)

If one wants a rare surname, "Hino" is the best choice, with maybe 20 Japanese households maximum having it. "Tsukino" is at least a full order of magnitude less rare than "Hino" is.

Kaioh, Tomoe, and Meioh appear to be completely made-up. So at least I got Hotaru's unwillingness to give up her family name right; it's something that only she in all of Japan has.

Oh, well. Yet another way in which IbM is different from re4al Life.

You mean you haven't noticed any of the balls, swimsuits, and assorted sporting equipment with Mizuno printed on it over the years?

Obviously she meant the Hobbiton-Mizunos, not the Sackville-Mizunos.  (Actually IRL Korea is a bit like this, where there are only a couple hundred surnames, but many clans within each name that may or may not be related.)  When I preread, I figured there were reasons for her to act like this.  My mother is a bit sad that none of her sisters could pass on my grandfather's name Walker, even though there are tons of Walkers in the world.  Incidentally the particular branch of Walkers we're from is associated with Clan Stewart of Appin – and even before I knew that, I really liked the west coast of Scotland, and incidentally snapped a shot of that clan's memorial at Culloden.

Japan pretty much only started letting commoners have surnames a century and a half ago (after steamships and ironsides, for those keeping track), so names can be held by pretty much only one family in Japan.  And could have been, well, made up. If someone called their inn on the Tokaido by the name of Tomoe, they could easily have decided to take that as their family name.  Lots of people got boring place names like Yamaguchi (mountain pass),  Tanaka (mid-field), Nakamura (from the village), Ishikawa (stony river) -- presumably because Japanese love fitting in.  But not everyone.

(Also in Korea the same thing happened with the slave class and lower class, all getting names in the late 1800s.  But there everyone invented a way to join one of the pre-existing clans for prestige.)

Kaioh and Meioh aren't "made up", they're just a translation of the gods Neptune and Pluto.  One wonders, if Ami is really as smart as they claim she is, couldn't she have figured out who the new senshi were by name alone? (Except Tomoe-chan, who doesn't follow the naming conventions at all.  Budding/blazing firefly?  Nope.)

Anyway, Mizuno may not be special, but it's hers.