Mori means forest in Kanji, Hiragana & Katakana

This word has two main uses.

One is to mean “forest.”

There is a kanji character using the character for “Ki” (木) that means “Hayashi” (林). Both “森” and ‘林’ mean “forest,” but those who realize that the different kanji characters actually mean different things are very astute.
In Japanese, “林” refers to a group of trees planted through afforestation, while “森” refers to a group of trees that have grown naturally, including both coniferous and deciduous trees.

Hello, Mr. Mori. This is an explanation of the origin of the surname Mori, which is shared by your ancestors and friends.

Japan is a country with an extremely high population density, as most of the land is either mountainous or coastal, leaving little flat land for housing.
Since there are many mountains, there were also many forests, and this surname originates from the terrain, with roots in various regions. It is believed that people who lived in areas with many natural forests, untouched by human hands, began to adopt this surname during that era.
It ranks 22nd among Japanese surnames and 19th among Japanese-American surnames.

Japanese American Surname Ranking (U.S. Census Bureau, 1990 Survey)

Mori ranks 19th in this ranking.

	Surname	Kanji	Supplement
1	Tanaka		4th in Japan
2	Yamamoto		8th in Japan
3	Nakamura	・・・	7th in Japan
4	Watanabe	・・・	6th in Japan
5	Sato		1st in Japan
6	Yamada		12th in Japan
7	Kimura	(written vertically)	17th in Japan
8	Suzuki	(written vertically)	2nd in Japan
9	Kato		10th in Japan
10	Yoshida		11th in Japan
11	Takahashi		3rd in Japan
12	Higa		1st in Okinawa, Japan
13	Kobayashi		9th in Japan
14	Nakano	・・・	46th in Japan
15	Hayashi		20th in Japan
16	Hashimoto		24th in Japan
17	Saito	・・・	19th in Japan
18	Sasaki		13th in Japan
19	Mori	・・・	22th in Japan
20	Matsumoto	(written vertically)	15th in Japan