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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. :)

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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.

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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.

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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