I don’t usually like to just provide links to things on other blogs, but the Marmot pointed out this amazing article that’s just the sort of thing I love.

A research on the name Kudara
Here’s a random excert.

For these characters Karlgren reconstructs the archaic and ancient Chinese pronounciations: *χmwət / χuət for 忽 , – / mai: for 買 , *nâd / nâi- for 奈 and *nəg / nậi for 乃 50, from which we can obtain the pronounciations in Paekche’s language *xol for “fortress”, corresponding to the Mongolian qorga “fortress 51, fence”, to the ancient Turkish qurγan “fortress” and koriğ “enclosure” 52 and to the MK 53 .ulh “enclosure, fence” 54, *mai for “river”, perhaps to be connected to the MK mɨl “water”, and with the Mongolian mari “great river” 55, *nai for “land”, corresponding to the Jurchin náh, to the Manchu na, to the Goldi na and to the ancient Japanese *na, all with the meaning of “land”.

The already cited 56 Chou-shu passage mentions for the king of Paekche the names Wolaγa 於羅瑕 and Kjʌnkitsi 鞬吉支 and for the queen the name Woljuk 於陸 57. Let’s reconstruct, always with the help of Karlgren, the northern Chinese pronounciations of the 6th-7th century of these names.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 4th, 2005 at 8:48 am and is filed under History, Japan, Korea, Language. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.