Kanji Cabinet hanzi bonanza

Gems and Minerals: 瑠璃・玻璃

瑠璃 ルリ lapis lazuli

These two characters might not be among the Japanese student’s flashcards yet, but as they’re being added to the Joyo kanji list this year, I expect that comprehensive kanji courses and advanced Japanese texts will end up including them if they don’t already.

Photo credit: Orbital Joe

Lapis lazuli — a bright, ultramarine semi-precious gemstone originally mined in ancient Persia. The Sino-Japanese name for this stone was originally 吠瑠璃 (べいるり), and comes from the Sanskrit word vaidurya, borrowed into Pali, then Chinese, and finally Korean and Japanese. In Japan and other East Asian cultures, lapis lazuli is notable as one of the Seven Gems in Buddhism. (That deserves its own article another time.)

Both characters are composed of a semantic component (玉, the jade radical) and a phonetic component.

In modern Japanese 瑠璃色 is often used to mean a deep ultramarine colour. It appears in the names of several plants and animals as well.

璃 also appears in the word 玻璃, an old name for quartz and another of the Seven Gems.

玻璃 ハリ quartz, crystal, glass

This article was actually inspired by a Japanese blog post that appeared today: シナ語と朝鮮語の「瑠璃」「琉璃」「玻璃」, comparing this and related terms to the Chinese and Korean equivalents. It seems that in all these languages, 玻璃 can been used to mean “glass”. Of course, in modern Japanese, the most common word for glass is ガラス, borrowed from the Dutch glas and often written with the kanji 硝子.