『日本書紀』における百済・新羅・高句麗の地名考察

Abstract

The notation of geographical names of the Three Kindoms(Baekje, Silla, and Goguryeo) that used in the Nihon Shoki(the Chronicles of Japan) is hard to be found in existing Korean historical records. This is mainly due to the lack of ancient Korean historical records. In addition to that, same names were marked differently as the Japanese records referred to different Korean materials, and the names using sound borrowed from Japanese words were recorded in the Korean historical records. Out of the Three Kongdoms, Baekje's geographical names are most often seen in the Nihon Shoki with names for Silla and Goguryeo also appearing. This seems to prove that the Nihon Shoki primarily referred to historical records from Baekje. Two-lettered place names were the most common for the Three Kindoms. Due to the features of geographical names, one-lettered names are often ideographically rendered from Chinese characters, and most three-lettered names have 'ki' and 'ri' attached at the end of the words. Four-lettered names are often rendered through phonetic translation(sound borrowing) from Korean words.　Applying the letters used for the place of the Three Kingdoms to the phonetic tablets of the middle-aged sound system of Chinese shows that the use of the 'entering sound' and 'aspirated sound' were rare. This is because entering sound 'r' is mostly replaced by 'negative sound' 'ri,' or 'ru.' This phenomenon supports the hypothesis that there was no actual distinction between 'aspirated sound' and 'clear sound' in ancient Korean language.