Marla Miyashiro says:
August 5, 2019 at 8:24 pm
My maternal grandmother’s last name was Za. She was reportedly from a place called Zyasu, somewhere near Tomigusuku in Okinawa. Could Za be a variant of Zaha, which you have on the list? My grandmother emigrated to Oahu in the early 1900s, and unfortunately we don’t know how Za was written in kanji.
__________________________________________________________
Response from Jim (8/5/19 at 10:50 pm):
Hi, Marla. The only kanji for Za that I could find is 座 (hiragana ざ). Possible Romaji pronunciations Za, Jōyō, Jwa. I’ll add Za to our list of Okinawan surnames and hope that someone will have more information for you. I’ll also publish this as an article for greater visibility. Please keep me updated if you learn anything new. -Jim
__________________________________________________________
Marla Miyashiro says:
August 5, 2019 at 11:12 pm
Thanks a lot, Jim! My mom once told me that my grandmother pronounced it more like “Zha,” as in Zsa Zsa Gabor’s name, but an aunt said it could also be pronounced “Ja.” So, it’s a mystery. I also wonder if Zyasu is the correct place name, since I couldn’t find it on a map. Maybe it was destroyed during the war.
liuchiuan 
Thanks a lot, Jim! My mom once told me that my grandmother pronounced it more like “Zha,” as in Zsa Zsa Gabor’s name, but an aunt said it could also be pronounced “Ja.” So, it’s a mystery. I also wonder if Zyasu is the correct place name, since I couldn’t find it on a map. Maybe it was destroyed during the war.
Marla – Is it possible that Zyasu is in actuality ZAYASU? My son’s classmates at Kaimuki HS were Zayasu sisters. Too bad I have no idea where their family emigrated from
I know some Okinawan sounds are pronounced differently than current Japanese. I’m trying to picture how my older relatives spoke and I can’t recall the Z sounds. For example, my grandmother would say “ye” which standard Japanese wiped out in favor of just “e”. This could be a discrepancy in Za vs sounding like Zsa or Ja? Also, some name readings changed over time (example, the shiro in your name would also be gusuku). There’s also other Japanese language rules which Okinawan names and words break so I tried a few variations in my search. I only lived for a few years in Okinawa as a kid so I’m no expert.
I did a search on the name and on the map. First, place names. Looking at Tomigusuku, if you look in a 4km radius, to the south is 座波 Zaha. When I was looking at wikipedia in Japanese, I was hoping to find a list of all towns and villages in Okinawa and find all that start with Za (besides the obvious Zakimi) but you have to click on a lot of cities to get to a granular level. Zaha appeared as a part of Kanegusuku-son, Itoman City. Put that in the map and was surprised to see how close to Tomigusuku it is. Perhaps your grandmother came from Zaha? Another issue with place names in Japan is that there was a name reformation around 20 years ago so some places ceased to exist and new ones popped up like Uruma City. However, usually this is noted in wikipedia articles.
Second was the name search. Using a Japanese surname website, I searched for the 500 most common familiy names in Okinawa. (You can sort by prefecture and they have more than the top 500.) I looked for 1 name kanji since Za is likely to be only one kanji. None of those one kanji names were Za. Then I did a search for the reading of the name rather than the kanji. Actually, only 座 Za appeared for the kanji. I didn’t find another variant. There’s less than 10 people in Japan with that name and they all live in Mie prefecture. So either it was a rare name in Okinawa and everyone in Okinawa left, or this is not the right kanji. For more details, see https://myoji-yurai.net/searchResult.htm?myojiKanji=%E5%BA%A7
On the same site, I tried variants and came up with nothing. I tried Zyasu, Jyasu, Jya (Ja). I tried googling in Japanese for last names read as that or a place in Okinawa called this. Nothing. Maybe I’m a bad researcher. I did find a last name 座守 Zasu. Another rare name in Japan with less than 10 people and they all live in Ishikawa prefecture. I didn’t find anywhere in Okinawa called Zasu. A really rare possibility: Za was an extremely difficult kanji reading and the Japanese government asked the family to change the name after World War 2 so instead of Za, it would now be something else. This is the story I was told for one branch of my family and Jim has some notes on the variations of this name on his site.
I hope since you posted you were able to find more info and I wish you well on your search.