|horse; horse chess piece; Surname||
child; son; (noun suff.); small thing; midnight; 11 p.m.-1 a.m.; seed; egg; 1st earthly branch
During the Han Dynasty, the emperor's commode was called 虎子. However, Emperor Gaozu of Tang had a grandfather whose name was Li Hu (李虎). Because it was forbidden for common items to contain the given names of members of the imperial family (see: Naming taboo), 虎子 was changed to 馬子, which morphed later into 馬桶.
- Min Nan
|Kanji in this term|
|Grade: 2||Grade: 1|
- packhorse driver
- A male given name
- 蘇我馬子 (Soga-no Umako) - famous leader of the Soga clan (died 626).
- Jim Breen's 'EDICT'
- The new Nelson Japanese-English character dictionary
- NTC's New Japanese-English Dictionary
- David Galef's book on proverbs "Even Monkeys Fall From Trees"
- Daniel Crump Buchanan's book "Japanese Proverbs and Sayings"