Origin
The term comes from the Japanese word boke (暈け or ボケ), which means "blur" or "haze", or boke-aji (ボケ味), the "blur quality". The Japanese term boke is also used in the sense of a mental haze or senility. The term bokashi (暈かし) is related, meaning intentional blurring or gradation.
The English spelling bokeh was popularized in 1997 in Photo Techniques magazine, when Mike Johnston, the editor at the time, commissioned three papers on the topic for the March/April 1997 issue; he altered the spelling to suggest the correct pronunciation to English speakers, saying "it is properly pronounced with bo as in bone and ke as in Kenneth, with equal stress on either syllable". The spellings bokeh and boke have both been in use at least since 1996, when Merklinger had suggested "or Bokeh if you prefer." The term bokeh has appeared in photography books at least since 1998. It is sometimes pronounced /ˈboʊkə/ (boke-uh).
Read more about this topic: Bokeh
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