卍 in Personal Names

The above picture shows part of an article from the Taipei Times. The full article is available online here.

The relevant part:

Taiwan Association for Victims of Occupational Injuries representative Ho Kuang-wan (賀光卍) expressed skepticism over its effectiveness as a deterrent.

Anyone who knows me know’s I’m a fan of obscure characters. I get downright giddy when I see a variation on a character that I’ve never seen before. Equally cool is a character used in a name that isn’t usually. In fact, this may be the first time I’ve seen 卍 in the wild. I brought it up to Steve, and he can’t recall seeing it like this either.

Early on, I’d always thought 万, the simplified form of 萬, looked suspiciously like 卐 (also written 卍), which shares the same pronunciation. They are in fact variants. A quick look at ChineseEtymology.org brings up a seal script form matching 卍 (L22753).

From the Wikipedia article:

The paired swastika symbols are included, at least since the Liao Dynasty (AD907–1125) , as part of the Chinese writing system (卍 and 卐) and are variant characters for 萬 or 万 (wàn in Mandarin, man in Korean, Cantonese and Japanese, vạn in Vietnamese) meaning “all” or “eternity” (lit. myriad). The swastika marks the beginning of many Buddhist scriptures. In East Asian countries, the left-facing character is often used as symbol for Buddhism and marks the site of a Buddhist temple on maps.

That’s about it. Characters are fun.

Thanks to Anne for sending me this photo.

3 responses to “卍 in Personal Names”

  1. Deck Zech says:

    According to the book, 《简易字说》, 卐 is one of the foreign characters borrowed into Chinese in the modern age and used for 萬. However, I’m sure I’ve seen 卐 being used in a couple historical document before the modern age, in both Japan and China. If I’m not mistaken, it was recorded in one of the volume of『異体字研究資料集成』 (Compilation of Research and Studies on Variant Characters).

    • Kellen says:

      I agree it’s unlikely that it’s a modern borrowing. It definitely is in older texts. It may well be borrowed, but then I still think 万 as a simplification is based on it.

  2. Hugo says:

    Hi, I am Hugo from Hong Kong. What I want to say is I am glad to know people who more like Chinese than the people who are Chinese themselves. Keep going, I am reading.

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