Origin and Pronunciation of 'Satow'
In his Family Chronicle (see below), Satow stated that the family name was Sorbian (Wendish) in origin. It means 'village of the sower'. The 'a' in Satow is thus—strictly speaking—a long 'a' (as in "father").
It is probable that Japanese friends or language teachers encouraged Satow to use kanji characters for his name in the 1860s, as is quite common among foreigners resident in Japan even today. This would have ensured the short 'a' pronunciation, there being no native words with a long 'a' in Japanese. The two obvious combinations were 薩道 and 佐藤, both read 'Satoh' with a short 'a'. Of these the former uses the 薩 (Sa) of Satsuma, and Satow himself may have preferred this one, as the Satsuma han was allied with Britain after 1865.
Read more about this topic: Ernest Mason Satow
Famous quotes containing the words origin and and/or origin:
“We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.””
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)