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ArchivesRe: name update
in reply to a message by ClaudiaS
Mmh, there are many names that are commonly thought of to be something that they aren't and where an older association has been lost (f.ex. today nobody, including myself, really knows that "Jenny" was originally derived from "Jane"). Even more in Japan where imported names are rare and usually there is no need to search for the origin of a name in a different language or country.
So today Naomi is a really normal japanese female name, but concerning the origin apparently at that time it wasn't. Else the author wouldn't have chosen that name and described it as "Western", like you said :)
In fact, the article doesn't say that Naomi started the fashion of names ending in "-mi", but quite on the contrary. At that time names ending in "-ko" where still popular and Naomi was too new, too modern, so it didn't became used widely until after WWII. Maybe because like you said other names with "-mi" were used as well, so it didn't sound too foreign anymore. So if that is true, I suppose it is quite normal that the name has lost his western image over the years.
The fact that Naomi was/is also used as a male name, doesn't seem to be a well known among Japanese people either, maybe Tanizaki Junichiro didn't know about it either ;) (By the way, I also can't find any male Naomis before 1940 more or less, do you know any others?)
I know that content from wikipedia should always be verified twice, but I don't think it can be completely wrong either (any idea for some other sources maybe?). So for the moment I still feel like it's a piece of information that should be added to the entry.
It's interesting how the name transformed itself from "western" and "too modern" to completely typically Japanese or even "old fashioned" (just read that in some blog entries:
http://www.export-japan.co.jp/blog/2007/02/15/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E4%BA%BA%E3%81%BD%E3%81%84%E5%90%8D%E5%89%8D%EF%BC%81%EF%BC%9F/
http://another.homeon.jp/2005/11/post_579d.html
So today Naomi is a really normal japanese female name, but concerning the origin apparently at that time it wasn't. Else the author wouldn't have chosen that name and described it as "Western", like you said :)
In fact, the article doesn't say that Naomi started the fashion of names ending in "-mi", but quite on the contrary. At that time names ending in "-ko" where still popular and Naomi was too new, too modern, so it didn't became used widely until after WWII. Maybe because like you said other names with "-mi" were used as well, so it didn't sound too foreign anymore. So if that is true, I suppose it is quite normal that the name has lost his western image over the years.
The fact that Naomi was/is also used as a male name, doesn't seem to be a well known among Japanese people either, maybe Tanizaki Junichiro didn't know about it either ;) (By the way, I also can't find any male Naomis before 1940 more or less, do you know any others?)
I know that content from wikipedia should always be verified twice, but I don't think it can be completely wrong either (any idea for some other sources maybe?). So for the moment I still feel like it's a piece of information that should be added to the entry.
It's interesting how the name transformed itself from "western" and "too modern" to completely typically Japanese or even "old fashioned" (just read that in some blog entries:
http://www.export-japan.co.jp/blog/2007/02/15/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E4%BA%BA%E3%81%BD%E3%81%84%E5%90%8D%E5%89%8D%EF%BC%81%EF%BC%9F/
http://another.homeon.jp/2005/11/post_579d.html
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Replies
Thanks for the links. I have the same reaction as the writer of the first blog--surprise that Naomi should ever have been thought "foreign-sounding" in Japan. What about Naomi would have been foreign-sounding in 1924? Not "Nao-", it was commonly used in names of the time. The ending "-mi"? It was not unknown, at least for male names, and "-mi" is not a typical ending for Western girls' names anyway. With hundreds of Western names to choose from that would have actually sounded "foreign," why would this author choose the one which fits into the Japanese language as though it had always been there?
Maybe this plot summary holds a clue: "The protagonist, a salary-man named Joji, takes a fifteen-year old downtown waitress under his wing and seeks to transform her into a glamorous Western-style lady modeled on such figures as Mary Pickford." It sounds like the character Naomi is a typical Japanese girl before her transformation, so why would her parents have given her a Western name? Of course I haven't read the book, so this is pure speculation, but maybe the author deliberately chose Naomi for its double origin. It actually is Japanese--albeit a style which was not in fashion at the time; it DOESN'T sound foreign, but at some point in the book, it could be revealed that this name is also used in the West. This would be a much more interesting twist than giving the character a name which is obviously foreign.
Also, if Naomi was too odd and modern to use in the 1920s, something must have happened between 1924 and the post-WWII period to make it and other "-mi" names acceptable. If the popularity of "Chijin no Ai" was such that after twenty or thirty years people were used to Naomi and it started sounding usable, it should have appeared first, then inspired similar names--not followed Akemi and others up the charts. I suspect that Naomi and other "-mi" names weren't really so odd after all, they were just not in fashion at the time.
I'm not sure where to go from here, but it is interesting, anyway!
Maybe this plot summary holds a clue: "The protagonist, a salary-man named Joji, takes a fifteen-year old downtown waitress under his wing and seeks to transform her into a glamorous Western-style lady modeled on such figures as Mary Pickford." It sounds like the character Naomi is a typical Japanese girl before her transformation, so why would her parents have given her a Western name? Of course I haven't read the book, so this is pure speculation, but maybe the author deliberately chose Naomi for its double origin. It actually is Japanese--albeit a style which was not in fashion at the time; it DOESN'T sound foreign, but at some point in the book, it could be revealed that this name is also used in the West. This would be a much more interesting twist than giving the character a name which is obviously foreign.
Also, if Naomi was too odd and modern to use in the 1920s, something must have happened between 1924 and the post-WWII period to make it and other "-mi" names acceptable. If the popularity of "Chijin no Ai" was such that after twenty or thirty years people were used to Naomi and it started sounding usable, it should have appeared first, then inspired similar names--not followed Akemi and others up the charts. I suspect that Naomi and other "-mi" names weren't really so odd after all, they were just not in fashion at the time.
I'm not sure where to go from here, but it is interesting, anyway!
This message was edited 5/20/2007, 3:13 PM
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Maybe it is something along those lines. Like you said the girl in the novel is Japanese, so it wouldn't work if she carried a completely foreign name, but a name that could possibly exist in Japanese as well, and yet wasn't used at that time. So this is only speculating, but since Tanizaki was one of the authors heavily influenced by the West, he maybe came across the name Naomi somewhere and thought "oh, this is a western name, but it could also be japanese". Else it would be weird how he descripted it as "if spelled in letters looks like a Westerner", that association must have come from somewhere.
(痴人の愛』のナオミを追加してみました。作中で「Naomiと書くと西洋人のよう」と書かれてあるので、作者はNaomiをある程度は知っている模様)
So it could be that he chose Naomi because it sounded like "Naoko", but with an ending much less common, making Naomi the new "modern woman" with a name that was "like a Westener's", while "Naoko" would be the traditional one.
Apparently he also spelled the name in Kanji as 奈緒美 and not with the typical 直 or 尚, and I'm not certain on this one, but I always felt that 奈 in names was also quite a modern character.
Of course, the author using the name because of it having a double origin is also possible. To be certain one probably really has to research the creation procedure of the novel or find some record of Naomi as a name used before that date.
Here is another wikipedia article, where they also list Naomi along with Risa or Erika as an originally foreign name that is today commonly considered a normal Japanese name.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%BA%E5%90%8D
(痴人の愛』のナオミを追加してみました。作中で「Naomiと書くと西洋人のよう」と書かれてあるので、作者はNaomiをある程度は知っている模様)
So it could be that he chose Naomi because it sounded like "Naoko", but with an ending much less common, making Naomi the new "modern woman" with a name that was "like a Westener's", while "Naoko" would be the traditional one.
Apparently he also spelled the name in Kanji as 奈緒美 and not with the typical 直 or 尚, and I'm not certain on this one, but I always felt that 奈 in names was also quite a modern character.
Of course, the author using the name because of it having a double origin is also possible. To be certain one probably really has to research the creation procedure of the novel or find some record of Naomi as a name used before that date.
Here is another wikipedia article, where they also list Naomi along with Risa or Erika as an originally foreign name that is today commonly considered a normal Japanese name.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%BA%E5%90%8D
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Yes, I think we are on the right track. I did notice he wrote Naomi in phonetic characters, as though it were a transliteration--the same way Risa and Erika (and other originally Western names) are still written. But when Naomi became a popular name in Japan a couple of decades later, the spelling that hit the top 10 was ’¼”ü. So clearly it had been reinterpreted by that time as a meaningful Japanese name.
The character “Þ has been used phonetically in place names (for example, Canada) for a very long time. In first names, I'm not sure. In the 19th century it was more common to write girls' names in katakana or hiragana, especially if they carried no suffix. Which reminds me, Kimi, Tomi and Fumi were all still popular up to the 1920s, so even though they aren't examples of "mi" as a suffix, girls' names ending with this syllable were definitely around. It may very well be true that Naomi was first used in Japan in this novel and that the idea of using "mi" in place of "ko" was a new one, but it was a relatively small leap. And an extraordinarily successful one. =)
ETA: Argh, it wouldn't let me cut and paste the kanji from the last post, and I don't have time to redo it. Sorry about that!
The character “Þ has been used phonetically in place names (for example, Canada) for a very long time. In first names, I'm not sure. In the 19th century it was more common to write girls' names in katakana or hiragana, especially if they carried no suffix. Which reminds me, Kimi, Tomi and Fumi were all still popular up to the 1920s, so even though they aren't examples of "mi" as a suffix, girls' names ending with this syllable were definitely around. It may very well be true that Naomi was first used in Japan in this novel and that the idea of using "mi" in place of "ko" was a new one, but it was a relatively small leap. And an extraordinarily successful one. =)
ETA: Argh, it wouldn't let me cut and paste the kanji from the last post, and I don't have time to redo it. Sorry about that!
This message was edited 5/21/2007, 6:57 AM
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So, if Naomi was introduced through the book, I suppose it was the first western name to be adopted in Japan? And it is probably the only one where the association with the West has been completely lost by now. At least I think that eventhough names like Risa and Erika are now quite common as well, most people are aware of them being used in the West. Because of the better developed ways of communication and TV etc, I suppose, which weren't really there back then when Naomi was introduced.
It's funny how today western people are happy, when they see a japanese person called Naomi thinking "cool, she has a western name, so it's easy to remember" and on the other hand Japanese people are wondering, when they see a foreign Naomi on TV, if that person has some japanese ancestors or something. Especially when seeing Naomi Campbell for the first time quite a few of them must have been really confused.
Well I think I'll send in some edit proposals for all these names, f.ex. for Naomi that it is supposed to have been originally introduced as a Western name, but has completely lost that image nowadays. And then you two can decided whether it would be useful to include these or not :)
In any cas, this was very interesting!
It's funny how today western people are happy, when they see a japanese person called Naomi thinking "cool, she has a western name, so it's easy to remember" and on the other hand Japanese people are wondering, when they see a foreign Naomi on TV, if that person has some japanese ancestors or something. Especially when seeing Naomi Campbell for the first time quite a few of them must have been really confused.
Well I think I'll send in some edit proposals for all these names, f.ex. for Naomi that it is supposed to have been originally introduced as a Western name, but has completely lost that image nowadays. And then you two can decided whether it would be useful to include these or not :)
In any cas, this was very interesting!
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