Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/359

Rh 11. The hōmyō or kaimyō, a posthumous appellation chosen by the Buddhist priests for each believer immediately after death, and inscribed on the funeral tablet. Such names end in in, koji, shinji, shinnyo, dōji, etc., according to the age, sex, rank, and sect of the deceased.

It is characteristic of Japanese ways that the native friend who assisted in the above classification never thought of mentioning women's names (yobi-na), which we will call No. 12. These are generally taken from some flower or other natural object, or else from some virtue or from something associated with good luck, and are preceded by the word O, "honourable. Thus we find O Kiku, "Chrysanthemum;" O Take, "Bamboo;" O Gin, "Silver;" O Haru, "Spring-time," O Kō, "Filial Piety," O Mitsu, "Abundance," etc., etc. But if the name has more than two syllables, the honorific prefix is omitted, as Kaoru, "Fragrant." Of late years it has become fashionable among the upper classes to drop the prefix O, "honourable," and to use the suffix ko, literally "child," instead, thus Take-ko, Mitsu-ko.

It was formerly the custom for a man to alter his name at any crisis of his career. Even now, adoption and various other causes, frequently entail such changes. The card is brought in to you of a Mr. Abo, of whom you have never heard:—the man himself walks into the room, when lo and behold! it is your old friend Hayashi. A teacher in mid-term suddenly loses track of a student named Suzuki, and has to pick it up as best he may in an apparent new-comer called Mitsuhashi. Not human beings only, but places exhibit this fickleness. Hundreds of place-names have been altered during the present reign, to the dire confusion of geographical and historical studies. The change of Yedo to Tōkyō is only the best-known of these. The idea, which is an old Chinese one, is to emphasise by the adoption of a new name some new departure in the fortunes of a city, village, mountain, school, etc. It is as if we should have changed the name of London and other places at the Reformation, or of Eton when the new Latin grammar was introduced. Bureaucratic