Ii Family History

Japanese: written 井伊 ‘well’ and ‘that’ the name one of Japan's great daimyō families originally based in Tōtōmi (now part of Shizuoka prefecture) later in Kōzuke (now Gunma prefecture) and Ōmi (now Shiga prefecture). Other variants of the name substitute either character with similar sounding characters such as 飯 ‘cooked rice’ 居 ‘residence’ and so forth.

It was formerly Romanized as Iyi. — Note: In the population figure published by the US Census Bureau the Roman number II (meaning ‘the second’ i.e. ‘the younger’ of the two bearers of the name) is apparently also counted as a surname Ii.