''shadow,"  "reflection/'  and  miru,  **lo  see."*  Place-
names  are  almost  always  compounds  which  can  be  easily
resolved  into  their  constituent  elements,  as  Yoko-hama,
''cross  strand;"  E-do  (Yedo),  "inlet  door;"  Ara-kawa,
"rough  river;"  Oshima,  "big  island;  Fuji-san,  "Fuji
mountain,"  "Fusiyama"  (the  etymology  of  Fuji\s  obscure,
but  probably  the  name  is  of  Aino  origin);  Miya}-no^-sh\ia,^
"below^  oP  Shinto-shrine^,"  i.e.  "beneath  the  shrine;"
E^-nd^-shimd^,  "island®  oP  inlel^"  Similarly  in  the  case
of  surnames,  most  of  which  are  of  geographical  origin,  being
borrowed  from  the  names  of  the  localities  where  the  persons
who  first  assumed  them  resided,  thus  Ko-bayashi^  "small
forest;"  r-7io^-ue^,  ;' above®  of^  (the)  well^ ;  Td^-naka^,
"  among^  (the)  rice-fields' ;"  Yama-da^  "mountain  rice-field,"
etc.  Men's  personal  names,  answering  to  our  Christian
names,  are  also  nearly  always  compounds.  Unfortunately
few  of  these  personal  names  can  be  translated,  founded,  as
they  are,  on  allusions  to  texts  in  the  Chinese  Classics,  to
feudal  functions  now  obsolete,  '  to  cyclical  signs,  and  to
other  recondite  matters.     Such  names  as  Ta-rb,  "big  male,"

*  In  previous  editions  the  word_y<i«/?,  "  roof,"  was  cited  in  this  context
as  having  been  derived  from^^z,  the  original  word  for  "  house  "  (which
we  also  find  vayasMki,  "  a  mansion  ;"  kutsu-ya,  "  a  shoemaker's  |shop,"
etc.),  and  iimne^  "  the  breast,"  hence  "  the  ridge  of  a  roof."  This
etymology,  borrowed  from  the  Japanese  grammarians,  seems  disproved
by  the  form  of  the  parallel  term  in  Luchuan,— j^^a  fiu  7ui^  which  corres-
ponds, letter  for  letter,  to  Japanese  jrt  no  tie^  lit.  "  top  of  house,"  whence
we  may  suppose  ^'««^  to  have  resulted  by  contraction.  This  instance
may  serve  to  show  how  uncertain  is  the  basis  on  which  Japanese
derivations  often  rest,  in  the  absence  of  a  tribe  of  related  tongues  to  serve
as  a  sufficiently  broad  standard  of  comparison.  Native  philologists  of
the  old  school — even  such  great  men  as  Motoori  and  Hirata— too  often
permitted  themselves  to  be  guided  by  their  "inner  consciousness"
alone,  like  our  own  Western  philologists  of  former  conturies.
