In The Golden Princess an #alternatehistory #Sf novel by S. M. Stirling there's a character whose name is an excellent example of how one character can have different meanings!
I promised my fellow Changeverse fans a post explaining How Reiko could perceive her name as meaning Ghost Fox but Orlaith heard it as Clever/ beautiful lady/girl.
Now there are several combinations of kana and kanji that could write the sounds REI + KO.
Normally in modern Japanese in a girls name KO is the tzu character meaning child though there seems to be a shift away from this practice with some adult women shortening their names to one character.
Lets see the characters I think REIKO would use to write her name on a Personal seal used for private correspondence or poetry.
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Copyright Julie Vaux 2015 |
In chinese this would be Ling Hu or Leng wu in Cantonese ?
The REi character has several meanings quick clever beautiful intelligent supernatural spirit ghost and its KUN readings is TAMA which means jewel and spirit so Reiko's childhood name could have been Tamako and then changed to Reiko as an adult? Her actual REIGN name will probably be something different.
Here's the traditional form next to the modern form on the right.
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Copyright Julie Vaux 2015 |
I'll show you the character for Fox with more info in a subsequent post soon!
Fellow Stirling fans please help me out but not just sharing this post but also referring people to my Red Bubble site? Thanks?
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