Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/279

 and of these 39 are derived from the nomenclature of the vegetable kingdom, 44 from that of other natural objects, 14 from that of geographical divisions, and the rest from ancient official titles, moral or physical qualities, and miscellaneous sources. The method that finally came into commonest vogue may be thus described. Parents in naming their sons generally adopted a numerical suffix,—taro (great male) for the eldest; jiro (second male) for the next; saburo (third male) for the next, and so on—and, by way of prefix, chose the name of some natural object, as kin (gold), gin (silver), tetsu (iron), matsu (pine), ume (plum), take (bamboo), etc. Thus there resulted such names as Kintaro, or Matsujiro, or Ginzahuro, which had the advantage of conveying information about the number of a man's elder brothers as well as about himself. Another method of constructing boys' names was to use the numerical component as prefix, appending to it the designation of an office, as suke (assistant official), hiyo-yei (military guard), yemon (gate guard), etc. Thus were obtained Tarosuke, Jiro-hiyoyei (abbreviated to Jirobei) Sahuro-yemon, and so on. It will be easily understood that names of the latter kind were originally confined to persons eligible for the offices indicated: they are, in fact, an outcome of the ancient custom which merged the personality of the individual in his official position, and bestowed on families a hereditary title to certain posts. For a similar reason, family names, since they had their origin in offices of State, might not be borne by commoners; that is to say, they were limited to the comparatively small section of the nation which could trace its descent from the chiefs of the first colonists and had been admitted to that rank for special reasons. The rule held until modern times. Hence, if a man possessed a family name, it was possible to be at once assured that he belonged to the patrician order. Japanese names are a source of considerable perplexity to foreigners, because, in addition to the family name (uji or miyoji) and the personal name (zokumiyo), there was a child-name (osana); there was an "adopted name" or "true name" (nanori or jitsumiyo); there was a posthumous name (okurina or kaimei), and there was sometimes an art name (go). The "adopted" or "true" name was nothing more than a second personal name—independent of any of the suffixes or 