Family name origins & meanings
- Japanese : ‘front rice paddy’. It is found mostly on the island of Kyūshū and the Ryūkyū Islands.
- Two families of daimyō (Japanese feudal barons), called Maeda, both descended from the ancient Sugawara family, were prominent in the decades preceding the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603–1867), which neither supported.