They said it couldn’t be done, they said “You’re crazy,”
but here’s another video about samurai names.
Ever notice how samurai kept changing their names?
Or how they kept reusing the same characters? Well, this is why.
The Japanese believed that words had power, especially names.
The word and the thing it described were two halves of the same coin.
You were your name and your name was you.
So if you thought choosing baby names took a long time, try choosing baby samurai names.
Babies probably died before they were given names.
Let’s talk about first names before we delve into the wonderful world of surnames,
where you could change your past if you didn’t like it.
There was this custom in China that you were not supposed to call someone by their first name.
It was considered rude.
And like bathrobes and doodles, this custom also made its way to Japan.
Only close friends and family or your lord could call you by your first name.
This is why time travel is dangerous.
Go ahead and try riding up to the shogun saying, “How’s it hanging, Ieyasu?”
and see how it turns out.
You’ll probably become your own grandma. Time travel is confusing.
The first name had 2 characters.
Early on, in the Heian Period, they liked to share a character between the names of sons.
For example, Fujiwara no Kaneie 藤原 兼家 had a respectable number of sons, he was very productive.
And he fancied the character “michi 道,” so he rammed it into all of his sons’ names.
Remnants of this practice still exist today in East Asian countries.
I am Vietnamese, or as my parents call me, white.
My dad shares the same middle name as his brothers.
My brother and I also share the same middle name, and that name is KING--nah it’s not.
This practice evolved into them passing down a character for generations.
This character was called a tsūji 通字.
For example, one day, the Ashikaga clan ran into the character “yoshi 義” and fell in love.
These are the first names of the first few shoguns of the Mario franchise loving Ashikaga shogunate.
It went on like that for 200 years.
The only non-Yoshi shogun was Takauji, and he never lived it down.
There’s always one in the family.
The word is the thing, and the thing is the word.
Having a name from your ancestor was like carrying a part of them with you.
It was a link to the past.
Different families had different ways of doing it.
Some used the tsūji as the first character in the name, some used it as the second.
Some families had two tsūji that they alternated between each generation.
And some didn’t have a tsūji at all.
Back then, when you were born, you were given a childhood name.
When you exited childhood, you stopped using that name, casting aside that child self.
You were given a new first name, an adult name.
Now the childhood name wasn’t lost or anything, close family members could still use it, especially parents.
It’s like if your childhood nickname was Babycheeks.
It was cute when you were 9, but if you kept calling yourself Babycheeks at 18, it’s kinda weird.
But your parents could still call you Babycheeks because that’s what they’re used to.
Japanese childhood names were like that.
Now your new adult name was often chock full of political meaning.
Your lord, in his infinite mercy, could bestow upon you a character from his name, a high honor.
Remember, you couldn’t even call your lord by his name, so receiving half of his name was special.
Or someone from an allied clan or a mentor could give you his name.
Names were also given as rewards.
If a warrior tore it up on the battlefield, he might have received a character from his lord.
It was an easy way for samurai leaders to strengthen the bonds between them and their followers.
The best thing was, it didn’t cost them much.
It wasn’t like giving away money or land, just a few ink strokes.
Names could symbolize alliances.
When the Fujita family allied with the Hōjō, a boy from the Hōjō became the heir to the Fujita.
When he came of age, his name became Ujikuni.
Uji 氏 was the favorite character of the Hōjō, and kuni 邦 was the favorite character of the Fujita.
Combining them into one name symbolized the alliance of the two houses,
or a desire for both houses to be equal.
Or, since the boy was from the Hōjō clan and therefore kind of an outsider to the Fujita,
it could have been Ujikuni making clear that he would be the true head of the Fujita,
and don’t anybody forget it.
Alright let’s talk about family names, or clan names.
If first names were important, then family names were like the opposite of British royal family drama.
In other words, extremely important.
The name was the family and the family was the name.
When someone in your family did something cool, the family name gained some XP.
Gain enough XP and the name levels up to a prestigious level, giving the family access
to lands and titles they couldn’t get before, and the ability to troll lower level families.
This is why Asian parents today keep comparing you to other people, they’re competing with other families.
Your success may allow the family to level up enough to crush the other families.
But if you switch majors from Engineering to Art, that massive, unrecoverable XP loss
would make your family subservient to the neighbors, basically slaves to them.
So the family name was a brand, and its strength, its prestige, its authority depended on the actions of its members.
People were strategic in the art of surname usage.
The Uesugi was a powerful clan, and they had a bunch of branches,
each a different family with their own name.
These branches even fought each other, so they weren’t all friends, but they all preferred
to use Uesugi as their surname instead of their branch names
because the Uesugi name had a badass brand.
It’s kind of like if you’re working at Waze, a company owned by Google, but when asked,
you say “I work at Google” with a smug look on your face and a firmness in your nipples.
But what if you didn’t come from a kickass family line?
Then you would use an effective strategy called “making s--t up.”
Look, it was a time when people went around burning temples and making head popsicles,
they weren’t above a little lying.
It happened a lot.
The 3 unifiers of Japan all tried on different clan names to see if they looked good in them.
They might or might not have absolutely forged documents connecting them to some rock star ancestor.
Tokugawa Ieyasu was originally Minamoto.
After he subdued Mikawa Province, he went around saying he descended from the Fujiwara,
because the Fujiwara had a traditional claim over the province.
But then when he wanted to be shogun and needed a good warrior lineage,
he went back to calling himself Minamoto.
We’ll talk about Ieyasu’s ancestry shenanigans later.
Oda Nobunaga called himself Fujiwara, but switched to claiming he descended from the
Taira clan when he overthrew the Ashikaga shogunate.
The Ashikaga traced its lineage back to the Minamoto.
Since Taira and Minamoto were enemies back in the old days,
it seemed fitting for a Taira descendant to defeat a Minamoto descendant.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi also used lofty surnames like Taira and Fujiwara,
but he was a special boy, and he did a special thing.
He made a whole new clan: Toyotomi 豊臣.
It meant “bountiful minister,” making clear that ruling all of Japan was on his bucket list.
He also claimed that he descended from the gods.
A divine leader should have a new clan, he shouldn’t come from some existing clan.
As you can see, changing your name was common, and it was often done for political reasons.
Let’s look at the various names of one Tokugawa Ieyasu.
He was born Matsudaira Takechiyo 松平 竹千代.
When he came of age, he tossed aside the childhood name of Takechiyo and became Matsudaira Motonobu 松平 元信.
The “moto” came from his lord, Imagawa Yoshimoto 今川 義元.
“Nobu” means trust or loyalty.
When he got married, he changed to Matsudaira Motoyasu 松平 元康.
The “yasu” came from his grandfather, Kiyoyasu 清康.
After becoming buddies with Oda Nobunaga and betraying the Imagawa, he threw away the “moto”
from his name because that was the name his old dead Imagawa lord gave him.
They were enemies, and he didn’t want an enemy clinging on to his name.
He replaced it with “ie” from the old Heian warrior Minamoto no Yoshiie 源 義家.
And then, when Ieyasu wanted the title of Lord of Mikawa Province, he asked the court to give it to him.
It wasn’t a simple thing.
You don’t just ask nicely and hope the court gives it to you.
He needed to show that he had premium blood, that he descended from a big-shot warrior from a fancy clan.
So he sent the court a document tracing his lineage all the way back to a prestigious
ancestor who used the surname of Tokugawa.
That family also held the title of Lord of Mikawa back in the day.
It was perfect.
Except the court took a look at the document and said,
“You little liar, you think we’re stupid?” and rejected it.
Apparently, it had some discrepancies.
Ieyasu got the sad news, and then suspiciously found another document that fixed those discrepancies,
and sent it to the court.
The court looked at it and said, “Okay fine, it looks good, we’ll let you have it.
This time, Ieyasu.”
And so he changed his surname from Matsudaira to Tokugawa, starting the Tokugawa clan.
Okay, if you want to learn about all the parts of a samurai name, check out this video.
I’ll see you there.
We have a new Emperor patron this week, Valkyrie.
Thanks so much you generous person.
We also have a regular new patron, Lior Goldberg.
Alright, I love you, and spread the knowledge!