A Very Geeky Thing
This post assumes whatever devices you're using to view it uses UTC-8 as a standard. If not, the kanji will just look like gobbledy-gook.
So a few days ago I'm waiting with my daughter for her school bus to arrive when I notice this Honda sub-compact. In particular, I notice the kanji next to the "H" logo: 無限 MUGEN. If you read Japanese, you already know what that means, but despite having taken two years in college, I am nowhere near fluent in speaking Japanese, let alone reading it. And I wanted to know.
Fortunately, as a by-product of said class, I had two books that proved useful: The New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary (1997 "Completely Revised" edition) and a Japanese-English, English-Japanese dictionary from Random House (also 1997 edition). Armed with those two books and my own insatiable curiosity, I went to work.
Using the character dictionary and cross-checking with the J-E, E-J dictionary, I was able to determine the following:
無 mu means "nothing" or "negation"
限 gen means "limit"
Together 無限 mugen roughly translates to "no limit(s)". Pretty cool.
And that got me thinking…what would my nomme du web Gaerfindel look like in kanji form?
Okay, start with the meaning: "copper(-coloured) tresses/locks". It's built on the same idea of Glorfindel, whose name means "golden(-coloured) tresses"-in other words "Goldilocks"-but with a more personal touch. (Besides, "fire hair" is used so often it's trope-y.) Hittin' the books, I get the following:
銅 dou for copper
髪 hatsu for (head) hair
Thus 銅 髪 douhatsu = Gaerfindel. Who knows, maybe I'll get it tattooed on my arm, someday?
So a few days ago I'm waiting with my daughter for her school bus to arrive when I notice this Honda sub-compact. In particular, I notice the kanji next to the "H" logo: 無限 MUGEN. If you read Japanese, you already know what that means, but despite having taken two years in college, I am nowhere near fluent in speaking Japanese, let alone reading it. And I wanted to know.
Fortunately, as a by-product of said class, I had two books that proved useful: The New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary (1997 "Completely Revised" edition) and a Japanese-English, English-Japanese dictionary from Random House (also 1997 edition). Armed with those two books and my own insatiable curiosity, I went to work.
Using the character dictionary and cross-checking with the J-E, E-J dictionary, I was able to determine the following:
無 mu means "nothing" or "negation"
限 gen means "limit"
Together 無限 mugen roughly translates to "no limit(s)". Pretty cool.
And that got me thinking…what would my nomme du web Gaerfindel look like in kanji form?
Okay, start with the meaning: "copper(-coloured) tresses/locks". It's built on the same idea of Glorfindel, whose name means "golden(-coloured) tresses"-in other words "Goldilocks"-but with a more personal touch. (Besides, "fire hair" is used so often it's trope-y.) Hittin' the books, I get the following:
銅 dou for copper
髪 hatsu for (head) hair
Thus 銅 髪 douhatsu = Gaerfindel. Who knows, maybe I'll get it tattooed on my arm, someday?