Kanazawa Shōzaburō applies the picture of names of things and of actions seen in the previous article to namida. This article follows the course of that argument.
The older theory
The etymology of namida (“tear”) long given is this: “naki mizu-dari” — when one weeps, water drips. That phrase, contracted, became namida.
Kanazawa sets another view beside it.
Setting Korean “eye” and “water” side by side
What Kanazawa first notes is Korean. In the Korean he gives, eye is nun and water is mur, and tear is nun-mur, joining the two. Translated literally, “the water of the eye.”
Now split the Japanese namida the same way.
- Mida: means “water.” (Kanazawa takes Korean mur and Japanese mizu “water” to be the same word.)
- Na: the remaining part corresponds to Korean nun (eye).
From this, Kanazawa puts forward the view that namida is na (eye) + mida (water), meaning “the water of the eye.” That is, that na may be an old word for “eye” in Japanese.
“Naku,” too, from “na”
Kanazawa goes on to think that naku (to weep) also grew from this na. As with the pairs Kanazawa lists — “katagu from kata (shoulder),” “tsunagu from tsuna (rope),” and “maku from makura (pillow)” — the mechanism of making an action from a name of a thing worked here too, he says.
Na (eye) was conjugated in the ka row and became naku (to weep).
So modern Japanese has no word na for “eye,” but only naku, the action done with the eye, remains. In Kanazawa’s view, na is an old word meaning “eye” that has vanished from Japan and survives only in Korea (the original’s phrasing is the tentative “I think it is so”).
Kanazawa also gives an Ainu example. In Ainu, tears are nu-pe and “to see” is nu-kara. Pe means water and kara means “to do,” so this too is worth consulting, he says.
What is certain here, and what isn’t
What this article introduces is Kanazawa’s view. On the etymology of namida his own writing is plainly tentative: “na seems to be an old word for eye.” The view that na meant “eye” is still sometimes introduced as one etymological theory, but it is not a settled one. And as for the correspondences with Korean and Ainu words, so long as a genealogical relation with Japanese has not been proved, the possibility of coincidence cannot be excluded. We sort that out in the verdict article.
Summary
| Point | Detail |
|---|---|
| The older theory | Namida = contracted from naki mizu-dari |
| Kanazawa’s view | Namida = na (eye) + mida (water); matches Korean nun-mur (“water of the eye”) |
| Naku | Explained as na (eye) conjugated in the ka row to become naku |
| Kanazawa’s reservation | Writes tentatively: “na seems to be an old word for eye” |
In a nutshell — Kanazawa Shōzaburō thought the “na” of namida might be an old word for the eye. The clue was the pairing with Korean “water of the eye,” but Kanazawa himself kept it to “it seems.”