Family name origins & meanings
- Japanese : ‘mountain castle’, taken from the name of the main province of the three which now comprise Kyōto prefecture. The place name originally meant ‘behind the mountains’ and described the position of the place relative to the more ancient capital city of Nara. When Emperor Kanmu moved the capital there in 794, he changed the second character to its present meaning. Some other families have taken the name from other places with the same name. The surname is mostly found in western Japan and the Ryūkyū Islands, where it is pronounced Yamagushiku. It is listed in the Shinsen shōjiroku.