Chapter 406: The Homophonic Meaning-Enhancement Method

Chiyou was the chief of the Jiuli tribal alliance in ancient China, and also the leader of the ox and bird totem clans.

In Chinese mythology, he is the God of War!

He had eighty-one brothers (about eighty-one clans and tribes), each possessing extraordinary abilities and fierce combat prowess.

Worth noting.

Chiyou and Yan Di belonged to the same tribe but left Yan Di due to conflict to develop independently.

Legend says Chiyou, acting under divine mandate, waged war against Yan Di and Huang Di, and defeated Yan Di in battle.

Thus, Yan Di and Huang Di united to resist their common enemy; Chiyou led his eighty-one brothers in a fierce battle against Huang Di at Zhuolu, and was ultimately defeated by the Yan-Huang tribes.

Chiyou's strength has been deeply ingrained since ancient times; had Yan Di and Huang Di not joined forces, history would have been rewritten.

Huang Di and Yan Di are China's ancestral progenitors, their status so exalted that no one in history or antiquity could surpass them—they are supreme beings.

Yet Chiyou forced them to unite against him, and only then was he defeated.

Precisely because of this, even as the defeated party, he has been passed down through millennia, still widely known today, revered by people across ages, and even Huang Di honored him as the "God of War."

It is said Chiyou's combat power was earth-shattering, his martial prowess reaching heaven and earth, his bravery unmatched; no one in the primordial age could rival him.

Even Huang Di could not stand against him alone—he summoned celestial deities to aid him; that battle raged so fiercely the sky darkened and rivers ran red with blood.

And yet this ancient figure, equal to or even surpassing Huang Di and Yan Di, is connected to Kamikawa Mitsu—he is a descendant of Chiyou!

Even though they had witnessed countless major events and many earth-shaking scenes, learning that Kamikawa Mitsu was connected to Chiyou left Director Takahashi and the others utterly stunned.

"Kamikawa Mitsu is a descendant of Chiyou? Are you certain, Yoshimura?!"

Professor Beishan couldn't help asking.

As a history professor, he was an authority on history; China and Japan shared deep historical ties, and he knew Chinese history in great detail.

He could not fathom how the Ashiya family of Kamikawa Mitsu could be linked to Chiyou.

Not to mention other factors—just consider the passage of time.

Chiyou was a figure from the primordial age; Kamikawa Mitsu is separated from him by vast stretches of time. How could Yoshimura and his team have uncovered any connection to Chiyou? The older the era, the harder it is to investigate.

Otherwise, last time when investigating Kamikawa Mitsu's origins, they spent a long time and only by chance obtained a clue from someone's words, discovering he was a descendant of Ashiya Doman.

Now, Yoshimura Yoshimura has somehow uncovered a connection between Kamikawa Mitsu and Chiyou—how did he manage it?

"Last time you struggled terribly to trace the Ashiya family—how did you suddenly land on Chiyou from the primordial age?" Professor Zhongtian also raised doubts.

Others held similar views, skeptical.

They had speculated about a possible link between the Ashiya family and Chinese mythology and agreed on this hypothesis.

But speculation was speculation—they never once imagined the Ashiya family had a lineage connection to Chiyou, let alone that he was his direct descendant.

After all, he was Chiyou.

Moreover, they had never considered the Ashiya family to be part of any major force in Chinese mythology, since the family had produced only two notable figures: Kamikawa Mitsu and Ashiya Doman.

Their family's power remained unknown, making it hard to associate them with any major force in Chinese mythology.

Ultimately, the most important point: the Ashiya family was, on the surface, merely an ancient clan in Japanese mythology; compared to Chinese mythology, Japanese mythology was vastly inferior, and as an ancient Japanese family, the Ashiya family seemed insignificant within the context of Chinese mythology.

Yoshimura Yoshimura did not conceal anything—he answered truthfully:

"Initially, our investigation into the Ashiya family's connection to Chinese mythology made no progress at all. We examined all Chinese surnames and found no compound surname like 'Ashiya.'

Only recently did our investigators discover that China seemed to have a compound surname 'Shangchuan,' which gave us a lead.

When I learned this, I immediately sent people to investigate, but later found that this 'Shangchuan' surname was not a compound surname at all.

His father's surname was Shang, his mother's surname was Chuan; his parents combined both surnames to name him Shangchuan. The pronunciation of 'Shangchuan' and 'Kamikawa' is identical in Chinese, and our investigators were misled by this.

They mistakenly believed China had the surname 'Kamikawa.'

Although China has no surname 'Kamikawa,' our investigators drew a clue from this: our investigative direction might have been wrong.

All along, we pursued the Ashiya family's connection to Chinese mythology from the perspective of Japanese orthography, never considering that if the Ashiya family originated from Chinese mythology, their name should follow Chinese linguistic logic.

Afterwards, we researched the Chinese pronunciation of 'Ashiya' and looked for surnames with similar pronunciations.

The reason for this approach was also this:

Our investigators had learned that in ancient China, people often used homophones to imply things that could not be stated directly.

For example, during the Qing Dynasty in southern China, there was a small anecdote: a tavern's business was declining, so a scholar wrote a couplet.

East doesn't care, west doesn't care, only the wine cares.

Prosperity doesn't stop, decline doesn't stop, just keep drinking.

Here, 'guan' sounds like 'guan' (inn), and 'ba' sounds like 'ba' (particle).

Once the couplet was hung outside the tavern, customers found it amusing and came in to drink; business gradually improved.

Beyond this, there were countless poems and couplets using homophones.

Not only in poetry and couplets—homophonic naming was also a major cultural practice in China.

The Chinese are far more deliberate in naming than the Japanese, who casually adopt surnames like 'Yamanaka' if they live by mountains or 'Mizuno' if near water—this would be unthinkable in China.

Chinese naming is highly scholarly; since ancient times, there has been the principle: "If names are not correct, speech will not be smooth; if speech is not smooth, affairs will not succeed."

The quality of a name greatly influences a person's fate, an influence rooted in cultural psychology.

Naming culture is part of traditional Chinese culture and enriches the Chinese language and writing system.

Naming involves broad content, closely tied to history, ethnicity, culture, geography, customs, and even in modern China, naming has become a specialized field of study called "Xingmingxue."

In ancient and modern China, naming customs often involve homophones to avoid misfortune and seek auspiciousness—people avoid homophones with negative connotations and strive for names with auspicious homophones.

For example, few people include a character homophonous with 'dao' (thief) in a name; even if they must, they add other characters to neutralize it and imbue it with positive meaning.

This method of naming through homophones is called: Homophonic Meaning-Enhancement Method.

People often use homophones when naming their children—for instance, someone with the surname Yu names his child 'Yu De Shui' (Yu Gets Water), someone with the surname Niu names his child 'Niu De Cao' (Niu Gets Grass), someone with the surname Zhu names his child 'Zhu Man Ting' (Zhu Fills the Courtyard), homophonous with 'Zhu Man Ting' (Pearls Fill the Courtyard), implying a house full of pearls to dazzle the eye.

From Chinese naming culture, our investigators considered whether the Ashiya surname might also be a homophone.

Thus, we began searching for surnames homophonous with 'Ashiya,' 'Lu,' or 'Wu,' hoping to uncover a clue.

Yoshimura Village Yoshiki rattled off a string of words, and after sprinting all the way back with the investigation report, his mouth was parched; hurrying to this point, he grabbed the drink that was always on the table and took a swig.

Then, he continued…

……

(PS: Today a fellow author friend said something to me that I think makes a lot of sense. He said, "My friends nag at me all day long saying writing is a dead end, as if not writing would let them accomplish something great.")