Japanese question, possibly/probably stupid

BigAlan

Today I was reading a book on heraldry. It mentions Japanese family crests called mon (made up of the characters 'thread' and 'marking'.) Any chance this 'mon' is related to the old Japanese monetary unit? I was thinking (and it makes my head hurt) the coinage may have started as a piece of metal stamped with a family crest.

satootoko

On this forum the only stupid questions are the ones that aren't asked!

Many "Kanji" (Chinese characters used for writing Japanese) sound alike, but have entirely different meanings. In fact, homophones (such as meat and meet) are vastly more common in Japanese (and probably in other languages using the Kanji characters) than they are in English. If you ever see two Asians talking, and one is using a finger to "write" on his other hand, he is probably telling the listner which of several charactrers sounding the same is used for his name, or whatever else he is talking about.

According to the Beautiful Bride, the character for a family crest read as "mon" is not the character for a pre-Meiji monetary unit which is also read as "mon".

shirohniichan

"Mon," as in family crest, is actually abbreviated from "kamon."

The character for the denomination and crest look similar, except that the one for crest has the radical for "string" (ito hen) to the left of it. Think of the family crest as money with strings attached.

shirohniichan

Here's the character the Japanese use for the denomination "mon."

sumnom

While they are different characters, they are related. The heraldry mon means "pattern" while the currency "mon" originally means "markings," hence it has come to be used for all manner of meanings from "spots" to "writing." It is not a great leap to go from markings to pattern and back again. The heraldry mon having the thread radical might indicate "cloth markings" although it is used for all manner of patterns. I have seen it in writings on archaeology in which there are references to patterned and non-patterned pottery.


Edited: I just did a little dictionary work and it seems that the kamon (heraldry) mon specifically refers to lined or veined patterns.

BigAlan

The book on heraldry I was ready shows the family coat of arms granted to a Canadian of Japanese ancestery whose family 'mon' is included in his coat of arms.

sumnom

Multicultural heraldry!