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. This question was first answered in the November 2015 issue of BBC History Revealed magazineīy the end of Chetwood’s period of study, the way in which the people of England used personal names had been completely transformed.The first thing that needs to be remembered about Japanese names is that the surname comes first. So it is possible our names are likely to tell us something about one of our distant ancestors. From around the 1200s, a person’s adopted name was commonly passed on to the next generation and so the inherited surname was born. Others, now common, came from a child taking their father’s name – including Johnson (the son of John) and Macdonald (son of Donald).Īs travel began to grow and communities met with more strangers, the practice became more general. They were selected by making some reference to either their occupation (‘Taylor’ or ‘Smith’ for example), personal characteristics (such as ‘Strong’ or ‘Brown’), or location of their residence (like ‘Wood’ or ‘Marsh’). Surnames came into common use around the early Middle Ages so that people could distinguish between persons of the same given name.
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