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Help[Facts] Re: Amateratsu and Uzume
in reply to a message by তন্ময় ভ
I am not sure that the historical etymology of each kanji helps in understanding the intended "meaning" of a Japanese name, though it is certainly interesting. :)
My educated guess is that the kanji 鈿女 for Uzume are older than 宇受売. Because the kanji "uzu" 鈿 is rather obscure, at some point it was most likely replaced by the very common 宇 and 受 (宇受 would be pronounced "uju" in modern Japanese but is easily readable as "uzu".) In this case, the meaning of 宇 and 受 would be irrelevant because they would be used for their phonetic quality only.
This does not explain why the kanji for the last syllable, "me," would have been altered from 女 from 売. "Me" is an accepted reading for both those kanji, and 女 "female" seems more in line with the name of a mythological character than 売 "sell." But in any case, I doubt that "receive" and "sell" had anything to do with the original meaning of the name.
If this theory is correct, then the original or at least older meaning of Uzume might be loosely interpreted as "heavenly ornamented woman."
My educated guess is that the kanji 鈿女 for Uzume are older than 宇受売. Because the kanji "uzu" 鈿 is rather obscure, at some point it was most likely replaced by the very common 宇 and 受 (宇受 would be pronounced "uju" in modern Japanese but is easily readable as "uzu".) In this case, the meaning of 宇 and 受 would be irrelevant because they would be used for their phonetic quality only.
This does not explain why the kanji for the last syllable, "me," would have been altered from 女 from 売. "Me" is an accepted reading for both those kanji, and 女 "female" seems more in line with the name of a mythological character than 売 "sell." But in any case, I doubt that "receive" and "sell" had anything to do with the original meaning of the name.
If this theory is correct, then the original or at least older meaning of Uzume might be loosely interpreted as "heavenly ornamented woman."
This message was edited 7/9/2010, 7:52 PM
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