Origin
In China, similar thick wheat flour noodles are called cū miàn (粗麵). This original udon was 2 to 3 cm in diameter, a flat pancake-shaped "noodle" added to miso-based soup. The Sino-Japanese characters for udon (饂飩) is similar to, but different from, the modern Chinese characters for wonton, which is called hún dùn in Mandarin (馄炖), a type of dumplings often served in soup wrapped with wheat dough sheets. In Chinese, udon is called wūdōngmiàn (烏冬 wūdōng or 烏冬麵), and sometimes wūlóngmiàn (烏龍麵), which uses the same characters as those used in "Oolong" tea (wūlóngchá, 烏龍茶), though there is no semantic relation between the two usages.
Kūkai, a Buddhist priest, traveled to China around the beginning of the 9th century to study. Sanuki Province claimed to have been the first to adopt udon from Kūkai. Enni, a Rinzai monk, went to China in the 13th century; Hakata claimed to have produced udon based on Enni's recipe.
Read more about this topic: Udon
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