WotD: hydrangea

[muckefuck]

1. die Hortensie
2. de hortensia
3. la hortensia
4. l'hortènsia
5. l'hortensia
6. y tension, blodyn yr enfys, blodyn yr seithliw
7. an hiodrainsia
8. 수국 (水菊), 자양화 (紫陽花)
9. 繡球花 xiùqiúhuā

Notes: As the uniformity of European names and diversity of Asian ones suggests, hydrangeas are native to Asia and only a recent import to the West. Sources differ on whether Hortensia pays homage to a woman named Hortense or whether it's independently derived from Latin hortensis "of a garden".

8. 자양화 is an archaic term found in earlier documents. Literally, this is "purple yang flower", but as 紫陽 Zīyáng is also the name of an ancient city in Sichuan Province, it's possible that the flowers are named for it. The corresponding characters, 紫陽花, are also used in Japanese as an ateji spelling of the native word ajisai. It's also an alternative (archaic?) name for the hydrangea in Chinese.

(The modern name, 수국, is Sino-Korean for "water chrysanthemum".)

9. Literally, "embroidered ball flower". Other Chinese names (which may designate individual species) are 八仙花 "Eight Immortals flower", 七變化 "seven changes", and--bizarrely, given their origin--洋繡球 "foreign embroidered ball".

Comments

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

Oh, I like "blodyn yr enfys".

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

What do you make of seithliw? "Seven-colour"?

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

That was my understanding of it on first reading. Like a rainbow, isn't it?

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

I almost never see the name of this flower in kanji, and only in hiragana. It suggests that the name existed (or was borrowed from somewhere else?) and then the kanji were slapped on later, as obviously none of those characters have those readings normally (unlike other ateji, which at least come close).

No shock that the most common Hebrew word is הורטנזיה, hortensia, Russian has Гортензия, gortenziya, and Greek has Ορτανσία, ortansia.

[pne.livejournal.com]

(unlike other ateji, which at least come close)

Perhaps gikun is what is meant here?

(I always forget what the difference between the two is. But I note that EDICT lists 紫陽花 as "(gikun) (n) hydrangea".)

Two other odd-kanji flowers that come to mind are 薔薇 bara and 百合 yuri.

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that's exactly what Da meant -- because there's no way those kanji would ever make those sounds normally, or even come close. :: laugh ::

Yeah, I never understood the bara one -- I ran across it in my early years of Japanese study, and thought that there were some other pronunciations that I was just unaware of (and that my Japanese dictionary neglected to tell me!!).

Incidentally, I don't mind this kind of transcription -- gikun -- as long as there's furigana to tell me how to pronounce it. There's TONS of flowers, animals, etc., that used to be written with gikun kanji but now are just in katakana, and the katakana alone doesn't tell me anything about what it IS, and when it's, say, a FOOD item, a mere pronunciation's not helpful at ALL.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Strange as it sounds, I always thought gikun were considered a subset of ateji.

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

Ateji's focus, IIRC, was to just use characters for names regardless of the character's meaning, like 倶楽部 for "club" and 魔羅 for "penis" (unless, of course, your cock actually IS "evil gauze").

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I meant to tell you that I looked in Martin's Japanese language through time and he proposes the etymology adusa "catalpa" + awi "indigo" for ajisai.

[foodpoisoningsf.livejournal.com]

I neve met a hydrangea I didn't like.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Wait until you see this one.