11/24/2023 0 Comments Common medieval names maleQuite a few surnames were for descriptive reasons. Commoners did not bear surnames until the Meiji Restoration, though they did have bynames often used to distinguish them, which may at times be indistinguishable from surnames to the common observer (see below). Surnames, or (myōji), were the prerogative of the aristocracy, whether civil or military. At one time, there were half a dozen swordsmiths alone named Bizen-no-kami. Later, in the Momoyama and Edo periods, many people would bear an honorary gubernatorial title it was one way in which the court and the shogunate bestowed honors. (By the way, “naninani” is the Japanese equivalent of “whatever” or “such-and-such.”) It was and is quite clearly a landed title, even though often used only honorarily. This is also one reason why I strongly feel that the use of “Naninani-no-kami” for “Lord Whatever” should be disallowed. Hideyoshi, after he was made nominal governor of Chikuzen, was styled “Hashiba Chikuzen-no- kami Hideyoshi.” In SCA parameters, this should work well for landed barons of Japanese extraction for example, the founding baron of the Trimarian barony of An Crosaire (meaning “The Crossroads” and rendered into Japanese as “Kiro”) would have been Sakura Kiro-no- kami Tetsuo. Those appointed governors of provinces would insert their title between sur- and given names. When more and more people began adopting their own surnames (e.g., the Ashikaga, Saitō, Ichijō) rather than using ancient clan names, the use of the particle died out. Technically, this naming structure reflects the use of clan names as surnames. Literally, the name Minamoto no Yoritomo is “Yoritomo of the Minamoto.” By the 1400s the particle was falling out of use. The “no” is analogous to the German “von” or the French “de” (yes, and the English “of”). During the Heian and early Kamakura periods, the names of the aristocracy would be rendered as Surname no Given name. The structure of names changed considerably over the nearly 1,500-some years of recorded Japanese history. This being said, let us take a look at names. Even today, where there is a habit to have girls’ names written in the kana syllabary rather than the ideogrammatic kanji, some will say “Oh, it doesn’t have a kanji,” when in point of fact, if it is a word, there is a kanji - they merely may not have thought of which of the synonymous kanji it might be. Japanese names are not random syllables strung together. Just as a girl named Rose is not a flower, a man named Takeshi need not be brave, nor would a woman named O-gin actually be made of silver. Such is not the case in Japan.Įven ancient names have meanings that can be understood if one knows the original language. Even names like Anthony, Charles, and Edmund have meanings it is just that they are lost on most people who don’t know the original languages of the names and their original forms. These are names the Japanese can relate to they have a meaning in our lingua franca, English. Consider the modern English names Heather, Holly, Pearl, Felicity, and Patience. This is an unsatisfactory solution, as it does not address how to deal with era-bridging figures such as Itagaki or Saigō Takamori.Īnother thing to keep in mind is that Japanese is written with what some may consider ideographs or pictographs every element has not only a sound but a meaning. Some publishing houses maintain the multiple-personality disorder of keeping in original order “historical” names (i.e., people before the Meiji Restoration of 1868), and reversing to “Western order” those post-dating the Restoration. This is a trend slowly being reversed by magazines and newspapers in Japan, which are now starting to use the proper name order regardless of media. It is a modern oddity that even today the names of Japanese, when appearing in English, are often reversed and written in the correct order when using kanji. The first Ashikaga shōgun, Takauji, was thus Ashikaga Takauji, not Takauji Ashikaga, despite the order sometimes given his name in many Western books. The first thing that needs to be remembered about Japanese names is that the surname comes first.
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