Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale

Optative namu and its Variant namo in Old Japanese Sources

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Abstract

The prevailing view that namo represents an older form of the optative suffix namu emerged in the early twentieth century and has since achieved widespread acceptance, becoming nearly unquestioned in modern commentaries and dictionaries. However, such a view rests on tenuous foundations. This paper reexamines several contested attestations in Old Japanese sources as well as long-standing semantic theories that continue to shape scholarly discourse. The findings indicate that namo cannot be easily regarded as an antecedent of namu, a conclusion with theoretical implications for its etymology that will also be explored.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: March 4, 2025 | Accepted: June 30, 2025 | Published July 31, 2025 | Language: en

Keywords Namu • Old Japanese • Optative modality • Man’yōshū • History of grammar

Copyright © 2025 Giovanni Pasa. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2025/01/013