There’s order at the head of the river?
When I referred to the “head” of the river, I was being loose with my words. I know 頁 can refer to the melon-sized thing on top of someone’s neck. But I didn’t—and still don’t—know if one can extend the meaning of this kanji to the head of a river, the head of a bed, the head of the class, the head of a department, a head of lettuce, the head of a hammer, or the toilet on a boat (yes, also called “the head” in English).
Here’s what I do know about 頁 (KETSU, ōgai, kashira, pēji):
• It’s not a Jōyō kanji. Hence, most of my dictionaries give scant information about this character, if any.
• This kanji now means “page” or “leaf” in Japanese, but in Chinese it can still mean “head,” as in the encasing for the brain.
• According to Denshi Jisho, one Spanish translation for 頁 is cabeza, which means “head.” But that’s not so in English?! Must be an oversight!
• The three kun-yomi bring up different issues. Let’s start with ōgai, which means “‘big shell’ radical.” There’s so much to say about this that we should take it outside—meaning, onto a side page, which you’ll find at the link.Terminology for Discussing Radicals …
• The next kun-yomi listed is kashira. That’s usually written as 頭, another and much more common way to write “head.”
• The last kun-yomi is pēji or peiji, which takes me by surprise, because this loanword is usually written in katakana. Perhaps, after the Japanese imported the word from English, they assigned it to 頁. At any rate, 頁 appears in compounds such as the following:
頁数 (pējisū: number of pages)
page + number
頁付け (pējizuke: pagination)
pages + attached• As to the on-yomi KETSU, for reasons that escape me, this yomi shows up in words related to “oil shales,” such as 頁岩 (ketsugan: shale), where 岩 means rock. OK, now what’s a shale?! The dictionary says it’s “a rock of fissile or laminated structure formed by the consolidation of clay or argillaceous material.” That didn’t help me at all. But … get this! The dictionary says the origin of “shale” is probably “shell”! So the etymology brings us back to the 貝 (shell) inside 頁 (shale)! Very cool! The etymology flowed in similar directions in English and Chinese. (In Chinese, 頁岩 also means “shale,” apparently.)
Oh, and maybe this is why Shell Oil named itself that!
Nope. Just checked Wikipedia, and here’s what it says:
The origin of the brand name Shell is linked to the origins of The “Shell” Transport and Trading Company. In 1833, the founder’s father, also Marcus Samuel, founded an import business to sell seashells to London collectors. When collecting seashell specimens in the Caspian Sea area in 1892, the younger Samuel realized there was potential in exporting lamp oil from the region and commissioned the world’s first purpose-built oil tanker, the Murex (Latin for a type of snail shell), to enter this market….
Hmph.
