Japanese Female Names 139 



O-Momo .... " Peach," the fruit. 1 



O-Nara .... "Oak." 



O-RyU " Willow." 



Sanaa "Sp routing-Rice." 



O-Sane " Fruit-seed." 



O-Sbino . . . . " Slender Bamboo." 



O-Suge "Reed." a 



O-Sugi "Cedar." 



O-Take .... "Bamboo." 



O-Tsuta .... "Ivy."* 



O-YaS "Double-Blossom." 6 



O-Yone .... " Rice-in-grain." 



Wakana .... " Young Net." 



Names signifying light or color seem to us the 

 most aesthetic of all yobina ; and they probably 

 seem so to the Japanese. Nevertheless the rela- 

 tive purport even of these names cannot be di- 

 vined at sight. Colors have moral and other 

 values in the old nature-philosophy; and an 

 appellation that to the Western mind suggests 

 only luminosity or beauty may actually refer 



1 Yet this name may possibly have been written with the wrong 

 character. There is another yobina, " Momo " signifying " hundred." 

 as in the phrase momoyo, " for a hundred ages." 



2 Scirpui maritimus. 



* Cryptomeria Japonica. 



* Cissus Thunbcrgii. 



5 A flower-name certainly; but thejia'i here is probably an abbrevi- 

 ation of yae-^akura, the double-flower of a particular species of cherry- 

 tree. 



* Brassica cbinensis. 



