Yukishiro etymology

[wombat1138]

(This is going to be a very rambly sort of entry as I try to hash things out. Alas.)

In RK's Jinchuu arc, the Yukishiro family plays an important part; considering their various associations and characteristics wrt winter, the end of the Tokugawa era, and white hair, their family name might be expected to have the kanji 雪 (snow) + 白 (white). However, it's actually written 雪代, where most of the time I've usually seen the second kanji glossed as "age/generation/era". But now that I actually poke at Jim Breen's kanji lookup for that character, I'm not sure that's really the right meaning either, at least for the "shiro" pronunciation.

Various pertinent compounds, formatted as
"kanji (kana pronunciation): romaji pronunciation, translation"--
一代 (いちだい): ichidai, one generation/age/lifetime
飲み代 (のみしろ): nomishiro, drinking money
糊代 (のりしろ): norishiro, overlap width/margin to paste up (?)
身の代金 (みのしろきん): minoshirokin, ransom
代 (しろ): shiro, price/materials/substitution
代 (よ): yo, world/society/age/generation
代物 (しろもの): shiromono, thing/article/goods/fellow/affair
苗代 (なわしろ): nawashiro, rice nursery/bed for rice seedlings

So the "age/generation" meaning seems completely out, assuming that the nanori follow the same pattern as normal words (which may be a very large assumption indeed). I'm still a bit flummoxed about pulling together a coherent concept from the various compounds with a "-shiro" suffix, though.

...maybe looking at the other halves of those compounds might help?

飲む: nomu, drink (verb)
糊: nori, paste (noun)
身: mi, person/self (in an abstract sense, usually in proverbs/idioms; the 金 -kin suffix means "gold/money")
苗: nae, rice seedling

So the general sense of "-shiro" seems to be "sufficient material for the preceding root word to be obtained"...? (Later addendum: actually, I think it's a bit close to the FMA-type concept of "equivalent exchange".)

I wonder if that means that this particular "Yukishiro" should be translated as something like "snow cloud" or "winter chill"?

Oog brain hurts now must lie down.

Comments

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

Sigh. I'm really going to have to actually rent and watch through RK, aren't I?

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Dunno-- there's no actual Yukishiro involvement in the tv series, except for a brief glimpse in one of the end credit sequences for the last tv season; two of them appear in the first OVA (Trust/Betrayal) with somewhat smaller roles in the second OVA (Reflection), and the third member of the family only appears in the manga.