綿, わた, めん

[Aoyama]

I wonder where the word (or rather the reading) わた for cotton come from ? Is it a native japanese word ? The 広辞苑 does not seem to give an explanation.
Some food for thought : in french, the word ouate comes from the arabic wada (both meaning cotton). Is there a link ?
This question may be directed to Flaminius who seems to be a real maven (物知り）。

 

[Flaminius]

Having checked various etymology dictionaries, I think wata has two likely etymologies.

1. It could be derived from Sanskrit vadara or badara (cotton). There is a legend that the first cotton was brought to Japan by a shipwrecked Indian. The first one to advance this point was 新村出.

2. It could be the product of generalisation from indigenous Japanese wata, or gut (as in harawata). Some sources reason that the cotton flower looks like the colon while others argue that the two are similar as the former is staffed inside the clothes and the latter inside the belly.

I have seen other etymologies but they seemed to me to be very far-fetched attempts to derive the word from ad-hocmorphemes.

 

[Aoyama]

First of all, welcome back and thank you for not forgeting my thread Flaminius.
Wata linked to wata (guts or entrails), hum ...
Linked to sanscrit ...
Regarding the legend about cotton being brought to Japan by a shipwrecked Indian, another legend (?) has it that Jewish and Arabic merchands, coming from Cochin in India, brought the stapple and the cloth to Japan, around the 10-11th century. That is why I was wondering about a link between arabic and japanese ... It should be interesting to trace the date of appearance of the word in japanese.
Different thing, sarasa comes from hindi or tamil ... (Sorry, japanese not available on my PC here).

 

[Flaminius]

See this Wiki article for the legend of the shipwrecked Indian who arrived in Aichi Prefecture in 799 CE. 延喜式 (905) records many places as rendering 綿 crop for annual produce tax. Those early mentions are to be understood cum grano salis, since the Indian-brought cotton cultivation is said to have died out quickly (Wiki says within a year here) and 綿 may have meant textile made from mulberry (木綿 read ゆう) in the early 10th century.

I am interested in hearing more about the Cochin merchants.

Anent wata as an Arabic word, I wonder if it is of Sanskrit origin. Arabic has a triliteral word for cotton, qutn, which has become English cotton. Aoyama先生, could I prevail upon you to request information as to which is the older Arabic word between qutn and wata? It seems all too possible to me that the latter is a borrowing from an Indic language and what Arabs reserved for "Indian cotton." It would then follow that, as far-reaching merchants, they spread the merchandise as well as the Indic name thereof to French, Polish and Japanese.

 

[Aoyama]

Thank you for all the informations.
I will check Wiki. I had seen the date 799 in the Kojien. The story about the Cochin merchands should be found in the Encyclopedia Judaica, at either Cochin, India, Cotton.
To go back to wata, here are a few thoughts :
wata and men can be considered as on and kun reading of the same word. Men obviously comes from mian in chinese, with other words as momen (where mo - mon- is probably short for moku). Men is also used used in compound, like in menmitsu, for different meanings.
So wata is a completely different word/reading. Is it of japanese origin (that is : men would be chinese, wata japanese) or both words would be "gailai go" ?
As for cotton , qutn in arabic, qutna in hebrew, with the triliteral root QTN, it may be slightly different from wata/wada (ouate in french = surgical cotton, etymology from arabic clearly stated). Cotton being the raw material, wata/ouate being a kind of coarse finished product.
Spanish and portuguese use algodon or alcoton, clearly showing the arabic origin .

 

[Flaminius]

In all the old material I quoted from or referred to, I cannot find any case where 綿 is explicitly meant to be pronouned wata. Having learnt recently that cotton was an imported luxary until Mēji aera, I shall not be surprised if wata reading turns out to be a borrowed word as well as men.

 

[Aoyama]

Right, the question being to know whether it is borrowed from arabic (or not). I had thought about the Silk Road (where Moslem and Jewish merchants, coming from Irak traded textiles, circa 800-1100, especially in Kaifeng), but then chinese would have had a trace of that pronunciation (wata/wada). Obviously this word (pronunciation) must have come by sea .

 

[Hiro Sasaki]

My spanish friend showed me a conversation book - Japanese- Spanish
published in Spain. It has many mistakes.


De que materia es esta camiseta ? (What is the material of this T shirt ? )

La respuesta debe ser " Men desu ". Nadie dice "Es de wata".
The answer should : " Men desu".


Wata is a cotton but no hilado ni tejido. （　not textile ) 木綿（　もめん　）　is
acceptable but it's better not to use it. I will give you an example.


明治時代（　めいじ　じだいに　）　エジプト、　アメリカなどから　安い綿製品（　めんせいひん）　が　輸入（ゆにゅう）　されるようになり　河内平野（　かわち　へいや　）　の
木綿の栽培（　さいばいＩ）　は　廃（すたれ）　れました。　During the Meiji era,
cheap cotton products from Egypt and America began being imported
into Japan, and the cultivation of cotton in the Kawachi Field disappeared.

Hiro Sasaki

 

[Hiro Sasaki]

I wonder where the word (or rather the reading) わた for cotton come from ? Is it a native japanese word ? The 広辞苑 does not seem to give an explanation.
Some food for thought : in french, the word ouate comes from the arabic wada (both meaning cotton). Is there a link ?
This question may be directed to Flaminius who seems to be a real maven (物知り）。

Aoyama san,

"Wata " is Kun-yomi ( pure old Japanese word ). Men is a sound of chinese
origin. ( On -yomi ).

Hiro Sasaki

 

[Hiro Sasaki]

Kawachi is a name for an ancient province ( now part of Osaka
Prefecture). It is devided into South Kawachi and North Kawachi.


Some people are trying to revive cotton cultivation in Minami Kawachi
(soutj Kawachi) and cotton products. But, I can not be competitive
to sell it in a large national wide market. They want to revive some
local traditional cotton products. They can be sold as souveniers for tourists.

Hiro Sasaki

 

[Hiro Sasaki]

In yao city, in Osaka Prefecture, there is a museum where you can
see instruments used to weave cotton. During the Edo Period, cotton
was being cultivated in Japan. It was not a luxury good. Poor peaseants
wore cotton cloting. Even Frugal samurai wore it in stead of silk-made
kimono.

Hiro sasaki

 

[Aoyama]

quote"Wata " is Kun-yomi ( pure old Japanese word ). Men is a sound of chinese
origin. ( On -yomi ).quote
Late follow-up to that remark : the problem is to know if this reading (yomikata) wata is really kun-yomi ("pure old japanese", if there ever was) or if it is also an on-yomi reading ( as well as men/mian in chinese), the origin of which is not clearly established yet.

 

[Anatoli]

By the way, we have a word вата [vata] in Russian, pronounced like わた only the first consonant is "v", which means cotton (usually used in medicine). I don't know it's origin, maybe it was borrowed from Japanese?

 

[Aoyama]

By the way, we have a word вата [vata] in Russian, pronounced like わた only the first consonant is "v", which means cotton (usually used in medicine). I don't know it's origin, maybe it was borrowed from Japanese?

Good comment.
Apparently, same word in polish . The question here is to know the origin of this word. Most probably NOT from japanese (into russian).
My guess is, granted the fact that wada is originally from arabic and that this word has given ouate in french , chances are that ouate turned to ouata/wata/vata(?) in other european languages. We should try turkish , greek etc. I still believe that wata in japanese is a foreign word (as much as men), very likely coming from arabic.

 

[Hiro Sasaki]

For many centuturies, 唐　天竺（　から　てんじく　）　China and India meant
"foreign countries", and the countries beyond India were even unknown
for Japanese people.

Greek, Roman, persian, arabian cultureds reached Japan only filtered
by the Chinese culture. Therefore, it is impossible that the word
"Wata" can be of a foreign origin.

The word Men came to Japan from China, and not Wata. Even in the
Basque language of Europa and Quechua, there are some words
very silimar to the corresponding Japanese words. That happended
only by coincidence.

Hiroaki Sasaki

 

[Aoyama]

The whole point is to know whether it is a coincidence (wata in japanese) or not. I have a feeling it is not.

 

[Aoyama]

This is a copy of a post posted on the spanish forum and the OL forum.
Quote:
Wadd´a en arabe veut dire pièce de coton. Donc je m´aventure à dire que l´origine des deux mots est arabe.



I have received a very interesting post by Terepere, from the spanish forum, see above. It goes exactly in the direction I am looking for.
Translation in english (if need be) :
Wadd'a means a piece [of cloth] of cotton in arabic. I therefore venture to say that both words are coming from arabic.
Here, I will add that probably only one word is coming from arabic, that is guata or ouate . Coton, algodon etc come from QUTN.

http://forum.wordreference.com/images/misc/progress.gif​

 

[Hiro Sasaki]

"Wata" meant "Sea" in the ancient Japanese. "Watatsumi" meant the gods
at sea, at least in the 8th century. It might mean "sea" 2000 years ago, or 2600 years ago. The poems and stories had been handed down to
new generations orally.


Some words of arabic origin, such as alcohol were introduced into Japan
when Japan had contacts with Dutch people from the 16th century.

Cotton and sea implies "bubble". For example, 綿雲（　わたぐも　）。
Spaniards influenced by the Arab civilization came to Japan in the 16th
century after expelling the islamic people from the Iberian Peninsula.
Before the 16th century, Japan had not any contacts with the Westerners
nor Aarab peoples.

Hiro Sasaki

 

[Flaminius]

Watatsumi is a great piece of evidence. Thank you for your contribution, Hiro.

Kojiki, the oldest extant Japanese history compilation (completed in 712 CE), several times refers to 綿津見 or sea gods. From other sources which I have no competence to discuss, we are told the word is to be read "watatsumi" or "wadatsumi." As early as the 8th century 綿, therefore, clearly requires the pronunciation wata or wada, though the latter might be the result of voicing that Japanese morphemes often undergo due to deriviational process (wata + tsu> wadatsu).

To my mind this seems to greatly reduce the possibilty of wata being an Arabic loan, since we have no records of contact with Arabs during the 7th or 8th century.

Flam

 

[Aoyama]

Yes, food for thought, really. One could also link the sea with sheep (ocean being sheep + water), so you could link sheep and cotton ... Hum ...
No proven contacts between Arabs and Japanese before the 11-13 th century, true, though is the datation of wata in japanese so accurate ?
It may well be, after all, just a coincidence ...

 

[Hiro Sasaki]

Aoyama san,

As I have mentioned already, it is only clear that cotton was
pronounced wata o wada during the 8th century. The Japanese
mythology had been handed down orally. It might been pronounced wata or wada about 2600 years ago, the year of the legendary foundation of Japan.Nobody can know about it.

Hiro Sasaki

 

[Flaminius]

Watatsumi (綿津見) is relevant to our discussion insofar as it substantiates the wata reading for 綿 in the 8th century. Kanjis here should be construed as only providing the sound but not the meaning of the word (which would be roughly "seeing cotton port," hardly makes sense).

I checked etymology dictionaries again and found out two things;
1. None of them considers wata (OJ sea) and wata (cotton) share any history.
2. In 日本語源大辞典 (小学館), I have found that wata in the original sense meant "floss" (of silk). When 木綿 (きわた, or cotton) was introduced in Japan, floss began to be called 真綿 (まわた, or real wata). Here I stand corrected for what I wrote in a previous post, "綿 may have meant textile made from mulberry ".

Flaminius

 

[Hiro Sasaki]

In the 8th century, it's possible that the material called wata is
different from the cotton. That's the detail I don't know.

The chronicle Nihon Shoki was written in chinese. But, the poems in the
anthology Manyoshu was written in Japanese. The chinese characters
were used only as phonetic signs.

The chronicle Kojiki was written also in Japanese. The chief editor Oono Yasumaro wrote in its preface that he took pains in expressing the
Japanese pronunciations using the chinese characters. For some Japanese
words, they used chinese characters only as phonetic signs. For other
words, they used chinese character as ideographic signs with the
Japanese pronunciations. For some Japanese words written in chinese
characters,the Japanese pronunciations were recognizable already.

Ooono Yasumaro thought that the beautiful Japanese sounds must be
expressed. Shinto priests even now way the words of blessing in the
pure Japanese language Yamato Kotoba. They use the words of foreign
origin almost only for the proper nouns.

Hiro Sasaki

　

 

[Aoyama]

Some more informations have turned out on our search :
first at http://etimologias.dechile.net/?guata where it states that guata comes from the arabic wadd'a through the french ouate (stated a few times already). Strangely enough, other etymologies are also indicated, as cuatle coming from Nahuatl (Mexican indian dialect ?).
One of my esteemed correspondants, TEREPERE, indicated to me that guata in South American spanish means also tripes (as in the japanese hara wata). Furthermore, it seems that some south american scholar tried to establish some link(s) between precolumbian civilization and ... Asia.
This is, for the moment, beyond my practice. But always ready to hear more about it .