上代神名의 借音表記

Abstract

This study discusses various aspects of 164 Chinese characters used in Ancient literature for transcribing Japanese Gods' names by means of pronunciations. Previous studies tend to exclude proper names such as Gods' names, which have been considered different from common nouns. This study, however, argues that the way of transcribing Japanese Gods' names in homophonic Chinese characters correspond to that of other nouns found in Ancient Japanese literature. The reason for the same way of transcribing common and proper nouns is that the same principle was applied to all the transcriptions in the ancient literature such as Ki and Shoki in the early eighth century. This study analyses the ratio of the consonants and vowels commonly found in both Gods' names and people's names. The most popular pattern is Ryakuon-gana, which is followed by Rengō-gana and Nigō-gana: Ryakuon-gana, a new pattern of transcription, began to be dramatically and widely used, compared to Rengō-gana and Nigō-gana, old patterns of transcription. The ratio is higher in Ki than in Shoki since using Chinese characters for meaning as well as for pronunciation is common in Ki, where there are noteworthily the same Chinese characters that are used for both their meaning and pronunciation.