hiragana

Where does the word "hiragana" come from? It comes from Japanese hiragana, and was adopted directly into English (1800s-1900s).

Hiragana’s story begins in Japanese: hiragana meant “a rounded phonetic syllabary.” Developed as a cursive, simplified script from Chinese characters, associated early on with women's writing. It reached English by 1800s-1900s as hiragana. Japanese 'ordinary kana'; developed from cursive Chinese characters and long used by Heian-period women writers such as Murasaki Shikibu. Today, hiragana means one of the two phonetic syllabaries used in Japanese writing, marked by rounded characters.

1. Stage 1 · Japanese · 9th century hiragana "a rounded phonetic syllabary", developed as a cursive, simplified script from Chinese characters, associated early on with women's writing.
2. Stage 2 · English · 1800s-1900s hiragana "the rounded Japanese phonetic writing system", Japanese 'ordinary kana'; developed from cursive Chinese characters and long used by Heian-period women writers such as Murasaki Shikibu.