Chinese

Proper noun

大和

1. Yamato (ancient name for Japan)
2. Dahe (an ancient kingdom in China in 929 - 934)

See also

• 日本 (Rìběn)
• 倭 (wō)

Japanese

Etymology

/yamato₂/: [jamatə] → [jamato]

From older 邪馬台 ‎(yamatai). Originally a geographical region in Nara, came to refer to all of Nara, and eventually to the country as a whole: Japan.

Chinese texts often used the word 倭 ‎(“dwarf, midget”) to refer to the people of the Japanese archipelago, possibly because they were actually smaller, or more likely as an insult. This character came to be used in early Japanese texts, such as the Man'yōshū poetry compilation, with a kun'yomi or native-Japanese reading of Yamato to refer to Japan in general.

This 倭 character also has an on'yomi or borrowed Chinese reading of wa. During the reign of Empress Genmei (707–715), the 倭 character with an original Chinese meaning of “midget, dwarf” was replaced with the 和 character that is also read wa, but instead has the more positive meaning of “harmony”, in spellings of the native Japanese term Yamato. The 和 character also has a kun'yomi of yawa, which would have been yaba in ancient times, suggesting another possible phonetic reason to use 和 to spell Yamato (on a softening of the “b”: yaba → yama). The 大 character meaning “great” was then prefixed to this.^[1] The resulting kanji compound 大和 can also be read with a kun'yomi of Ōyamato.^[2][3]

Alternative forms

• 倭

Pronunciation

• Kun'yomi
• IPA^(key): [ja̠ma̠to̞]

Proper noun

大和 ‎(hiragana やまと, romaji Yamato)

1. a town in the Shikinoshimo district in the Yamato Province of Japan, generally equivalent to modern Tenri area
2. a city in Kanagawa Prefecture
3. one of the old provinces that made up Japan, generally equivalent to modern Nara prefecture
4. the country of Japan
5. A male given name
6. A surname​

Derived terms

Synonyms

• (Japan): 日本 ‎(Nihon, Nippon)

See also

• 奈良 (なら) ‎(Nara)

References

1. ↑ 1995, 大辞泉 (Daijisen) (in Japanese), Tōkyō: Shogakukan, ISBN 4-09-501211-0
2. ↑ 1988, 国語大辞典（新装版） (Kokugo Dai Jiten, Revised Edition) (in Japanese), Tōkyō: Shogakukan
3. ↑ 2006, 大辞林 (Daijirin), Third Edition (in Japanese), Tōkyō: Sanseidō, ISBN 4-385-13905-9