Names relating to number are very common, but also very interesting. They may be loosely divided into two sub-classes,—names indicating the order or the time of birth, and names of felicitation. Such yobina as Ichi, San, Roku, Hachi usually refer to the order of birth; but sometimes they record the date of birth. For example, I know a person called O-Roku, who received this name, not because she was the sixth child born in the family, but because she entered this world upon the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth Meiji. It will be observed that the numbers Two, Five, and Nine are not represented in the list: the mere idea of such names as O-Ni, O-Go, or O-Ku seems to a Japanese absurd. I do not know exactly why,—unless it be that they suggest unpleasant puns. The place of O-Ni is well supplied, however, by the name O-Tsugi ("Next"), which will be found in a subsequent list. Names signifying numbers ranging from eighty to a thousand, and upward, are names of felicitation. They express the wish that the bearer may live to a prodigious age, or that her posterity may flourish through the centuries.
NUMERALS AND WORDS RELATING TO NUMBER
| O-Ichi | "One." |
| O-San | "Three." |
| O-Mitsu | "Three." |
| O-Yotsu | "Four." |
| O-Roku | "Six." |
| O-Shichi | "Seven." |
| O-Hachi | "Eight." |
| O-Jū | "Ten." |
| O-Iso | "Fifty."[65] |
[65] ] Such a name may record the fact that the girl was a first-born child, and the father fifty years old at the time of her birth.
| O-Yaso | "Eighty." |
| O-Hyaku | "Hundred."[66] |
[66] ] The "O" before this trisyllable seems contrary to rule; but Hyaku is pronounced almost like a dissyllable.
| O-Yao | "Eight Hundred." |
| O-Sen | "Thousand." |
| O-Michi | "Three Thousand." |
| O-Man | "Ten Thousand." |
| O-Chiyo | "Thousand Generations." |
| Yachiyo | "Eight Thousand Generations." |
| O-Shigé | "Two-fold." |
| O-Yaë | "Eight-fold." |
| O-Kazu | "Great Number." |
| O-Mina | "All." |
| O-Han | "Half."[67] |
[67] ] "Better half?"—the reader may query. But I believe that this name originated in the old custom of taking a single character of the father's name—sometimes also a character of the mother's name—to compose the child's name with. Perhaps in this case the name of the girl's father was Hanyémon, or Hanbei.