Now the middle of fall season and most of the deciduous trees and shrubs have just started to turn their foliage colors from summer colors to fall colors. So this time I want to mention about maple.
Japanese Kanji Momiji
Generally we call maples as “紅葉(もみじ – momiji)” or “楓(かえで – kaede)” in Japan. But the Kanji word “紅葉” originally means red leaves or foliage (“紅” means red and “葉” means leaf), so the word of “紅葉” is originally used for indicating all the deciduous plants that turn their foliage color from their summer colors to red fall color.
Japanese Kanji for Maple
And we use the word “楓(ふう – fuu orかえで – kaede)” for indicating only the group trees or shrubs of maples. And sometime we use the word “楓樹(ふうじゅ – fuuju)” just for maple tree.
In Japan both of the word “紅葉” and “楓” are often used as girls’ names not only as Kanji names but also as Hiragana and Katakana names. The Katakana for the “紅葉” is “モミジ” and the Katakana for “楓” is “カエデ”.
Kanji Stroke Order for 紅葉
Stroke Order for 紅葉
Comments
So, to clarify, what word would you use to describe a japanese maple? If I were to say, “I have a beautiful shishigashira [japanese maple].” It would be shishigashira [kaede]?
Hello Mr. Spencer Jordan and thank you for visiting my site.
In Japan both of the words Momiji and Kaede are very popular words and as I mentioned on the post, these words are used for calling the group of maple trees (even though the word “Momiji” is often used for other fall color deciduous trees).
And among the trees of maple species, the word “Momiji” is used for the maples which have deep slits on their leaves and the word “Kaede” is used for the maples which have relatively sallow slits on their leaves (such as Canadian Maple).
So for the “Shishigashira” maples we usually call them “獅子頭紅葉-Shishigashira Momiji”.
I hope this description clear your inquiry and if you still feel not clear, please let me know again.