Indonesian Parents Name Children After Anime Characters: Nobita, Naruto, and D. Luffy

The Directorate General of Population and Civil Registration (Dukcapil) of the Ministry of Home Affairs has revealed an interesting fact about naming practices in Indonesia, where famous anime characters are used as children’s names. This was disclosed by Dukcapil Director General Teguh Setyabudi during the 2026 Dukcapil National Coordination Meeting and the release of Clean Population Data for the First Semester of 2026. Teguh stated that some parents in Indonesia use their favourite anime characters to name their children. “There are names that use animation characters. It turns out parents who like animation, I am serious about this, I could be sued if I were lying. The Director General of Dukcapil speaks based on population data, but apparently there are many,” said Teguh. The anime character names range from Nobita, Doraemon, and Sasuke to the main character of the One Piece series, D. Luffy. There are also parents who have named their child after the anime character Shinchan. “There are those named Nobita, Uzumaki, Sasuke, Naruto, Uchiha, Shinchan, Boruto, and so on. There are 8 named Suneo, the one who likes to cry,” Teguh added. According to Dukcapil data, the anime character names recorded in Indonesia include Uzumaki with 190 people, Nobita with 181 people, Sasuke with 158 people, Naruto with 157 people, Uchiha with 152 people, D. Luffy with 79 people, Shinchan with 65 people, Boruto with 60 people, Usopp with 37 people, Inuyasha with 23 people, Doraemon with 16 people, and Suneo with 8 people. Additionally, names of countries are also used as personal names in Indonesia, including Oman with 28,818 people, Yunani (Greece) with 12,288 people, Yaman (Yemen) with 10,103 people, Suriah (Syria) with 7,127 people, Saudi with 6,689 people, and Iran with 3,562 people. Other examples include Rusia (Russia) with 2,082 people, Timor with 1,622 people, Ghana with 1,511 people, and Bahrain with 1,325 people.