Category talk:Okinawan surnames

Rename: Okinawan surnames

I propose to rename this category as "Okinawan surnames" if we really need this. I don't see why Coastaline (talk · contribs) chose the phrase "Ryukyuan surnames". There is no such thing as Ryukyuan surnames. Okinawans have surnames simply because they comply with modern Japanese naming regulations (emigration started after the introduction of the regulations). Okinawan surnames were taken from place names because the ruling class earlier adopted the mainland Japanese custom of assuming the name of one's fief (myōji). Independently of Okinawan surnames, people from the Amami Islands are known for one-character surnames because the Satsuma Domain imposed one-character surnames on the ruling class of the Amami Islands. In short, there are (at least) two distinctive naming customs that have nothing in common except the fact that they comply with modern Japanese naming regulations. They are both deviations from shared Ryukyuan heritage. --Nanshu (talk) 16:26, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

@Nanshu, I made the category "Ryukyuan surnames" to avoid potential confusion, as while the Sakishima Islands are in Okinawa Prefecture, they are independent island groups from Okinawa proper itself. For example, you can find people named "Higa" or "Arashiro" from Ishigaki, which is in the Yaeyama Islands. — Coastaline (talk) 18:13, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

To avoid confusion? Your reply actually adds confusion. I need to ask clarifying questions. What is the intended scope of this category? Does it cover the following surnames?

• Distinctively Yaeyama surnames such as Miyara, Kedashiro, and Hateruma?
• Distinctively Amami surnames such as Hajime, Atari, and Nobori?
• Surnames showing wider geographical distributions such as Ishihara, Yamada, and Okudaira?

--Nanshu (talk) 16:25, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

The point of this category was to cover surnames found within the entire Ryukyu archipelago. It includes:

• easily identifiable ones such as Higa.
• ones that can also be found in mainland Japan but also are Ryukyuan and have distinct pronunciations in the Ryukyuan languages. Examples include Tamaki (Tamagusuku), Miyagi (Miyashiro), Kanashiro (Kanagusuku), etc.
• and last but not least, yes, including the one-kanji Amami surnames.

That’s the intended scope of this category. Calling it “Okinawan surnames” at its current state sounds off to me since Sakishima isn’t within the Okinawa Islands itself, and the surnames I added could be found there as well. That was what I meant by my first response. — Coastaline (talk) 02:56, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

(←) So you are promoting an only-in-Wikipedia artifact. As I said, there is no valid category that only contains Amami and Okinawan surnames as its subcategories. So delete. Alternatively, the only way to save this category is to rename as "Okinawan surnames" by choosing either one of the two scopes.

1. Okinawa Islands. Surnames from the Miyako and Yaeyama Islands (BTW, Sakishima is an Okinawa-centric name. I once got a negative reaction from a guy from Miyako Island when I happened to use the term.) can be covered by other categories. As you see, these categories are not to be mutually exclusive.
2. Okinawa Prefecture. Okinawa + Miyako + Yaeyama - Amami are correctly referred to as Okinawa Prefecture. And the modern naming regulations were indeed introduced there under Okinawa Prefecture.

I prefer the first option, but we can postpone a decision. You can rethink the category hierarchy once you really get involved in Miyako/Yaeyama stuff rather than just using it as an excuse for Okinawa-centrism. --Nanshu (talk) 17:48, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

I get your point regarding the different origins of certain Ryukyuan surnames since they of course differ across separate island groups but don’t surname categories in general cover a geographic region? Many surnames in Japan differ from each other (like how Okinawan and Amami names are different) yet they’re all grouped under “Japanese surnames”. What’s wrong with the “Ryukyuan surnames” grouping if other categories combine distinctive surnames based on a geographic point of view?

Furthermore, what’s wrong with making a Ryukyuan surnames category and then making subcategories based off of specific regions? I was thinking for example that if a surname is specific to an island group, it could be a part of that subcategory. Surnames found in multiple groups (like how Arashiro can be found in Okinawa, Miyako and Yaeyama) can remain in the “Ryukyuan surnames” category if they can’t be specified. I think that would be a good addition if we wanted to differentiate them. — Coastaline (talk) 23:01, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Promoting an only-in-Wikipedia artifact is bad, of course. The Japanese case in your argument misses the point because we don't need to create an artificial intermediate category. The fundamental misunderstanding is that the "Ryukyu Islands" are a coherent entity. They are not. It sounds like you are an American military dictator in a dystopian future where you annex Amami to Okinawa again against the will of the people. What we see today are (at least) two distinct cultures. When we search for Ryukyu-wide things, we inevitably go back to a distant past when people did not have surnames.

As I demonstrated in Ryukyuan music, there are external sources working on shared Ryukyuan heritage, most of which still await incorporation into Wikipedia. We need to make room for this kind of scholarly work in Wikipedia. We cannot treat Okinawa as the center of the region and everything else as a periphery that can be added or removed with an arbitrary choice because that hinders healthy development of Wikipedia. In my opinion, the only feasible solution is to reserve the term "Ryukyuan" for shared Ryukyuan heritage at least for page titles. --Nanshu (talk) 07:59, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure what I did that resembles the Amami reversion situation. If I use the term "Ryukyuan", doesn't that encompass all of the islands? Where is the Okinawa-centric implication there? Ryukyu isn't just Okinawa. On the contrary, it seems a bit Okinawa-centric to classify Yaeyama and Miyako surnames as Okinawan when they're different island groups. If I recall correctly, they've only been seen as "Okinawa" recently as a result of when Japan annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom. They were put under "Okinawa Prefecture" even though they're not actually a part of the Okinawa Islands.

Out of curiosity, since you mentioned the Ryukyuan music article, isn't it doing the exact same thing I'm doing? It's putting the musical culture of the entire Ryukyu Islands under one page even though it differs throughout the region. For example, most of the Amami Islands don't even utilize eisaa, and the Amami sanshin sounds more like a shamisen. Yet, for some reason, that article still goes over those islands. Much like a category titled "Ryukyuan surnames", the article "Ryukyuan music" sounds geographic. — Coastaline (talk) 09:05, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

FYI, Ryukyu as an umbrella term for the large archipelago is a recent innovation. Ryukyu is a loan word from Chinese that has consistently referred to Okinawa Island after centuries of confusion with Taiwan. It rarely appeared in Okinawan text, however. In fact, Chinese Liuqiu was routinely translated as "Okinawa" in Okinawan. The word Ryukyu was chosen for the large geographical entity simply because people there have no native term for it. It is certainly not a basic level category people cared about. The word Okinawa coincidentally followed the pattern (the Meiji government also named other prefectures after small areas; cf Hyogo and Kanagawa). This is another source of misunderstanding, and I will discuss this problem somewhere in the future, not now, as it requires a lot of time and effort. But it's important to remember that the word Ryukyu itself implies Okinawa-centrism, and that's one of the reasons why the Amami Islanders refuse to be labeled as Ryukyu.

I explicitly used the words, past, today, and future. It's a pity you missed the point. The article Ryukyuan music clearly points to the distant past reconstructed theoretically by comparing the astonishingly diverse present cultures. Surnames have no such shared ancestor. They were distinct from the very beginning, and hence there is no external source reconstructing a shared ancestral state. So we are talking about the present states. What we see today are (at least) two distinct cultures, although, of course, I don't claim there is no interaction between the two. We can take into account the fact that for more than a century, Okinawa Prefecture has shaped the current state of Okinawa Prefecture, or we can give weight to the fact that the people from the Miyako Islands still see Okinawans as Other more often than as Self. The point is that there is no option to incorporate Amami. The only-in-Wikipedia artifact would come into existence only if you annex Amami to Okinawa and force Amami to share history with Okinawa long enough for the two cultures to be recognized as a single coherent entity. As long as you talk about the present states, you need to accept the present reality. --Nanshu (talk) 15:25, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

After further thinking, I've come to agree with you. After all, the Wikipedia article is called Okinawan name and it describes a separate origin from the surnames found in the Amami Islands. I will agree with the page being renamed to "Okinawan surnames", but I think it should cover surnames found in the Okinawa Islands only (as you suggested). I think separate categories would be better to cover Miyako, Yaeyama and Amami-specific ones. — Coastaline (talk) 06:03, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Good. I hope you base your decision-making on what they are, not on what you believe they should be. --Nanshu (talk) 13:57, 3 October 2020 (UTC)