What does "Nori" mean in a person's name?

Let’s take a break from wondering about whether the machines can understand the mind-body problem and talk about what’s going on with all the Japanese names that contain NORI.

There’s Noriko, and Takanori, and hundreds more. And there are a dozen or more kanjis used for it, including 法, 則, 憲, 紀, 典. and 宜, to name just a few. But there’s no word nori in modern Japanese (unless you count seaweed, or that glue that schoolkids use). So what does NORI mean, where did it come from, and why is it seen in so many names? Even in this age of off-the-wall kids’ names, Noriaki is still the 115th popular boy’s name. 紀 was the character used for ex-Princess Nori, the younger sister of the current Emperor.

If you want to use Nori in your kid’s name but give it a modern twist, you could go with Norito, perhaps written as 徳人, or in so many other ways that there’s an entire web page devoted to possible kanji for it, the majority of which no one is ever going to be able to read. Anyone for 登翔?

Actually the word “NORI” comes from the old verb noru. It describes an important person making a declaration or pronouncement, issuing a command, making a prediction, conferring a blessing, or even cursing someone. Basically, it’s just stating or saying something. The important person could be a god, or the emperor, or a local chieftain. Given the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, it’s not at all surprising that they would have a separate word for such utterances by important people.

If what the important person says is some rule that everyone is to follow, that is a law; hence the use of the kanji 法. If it's a foundational law, like a constitution, that would be 憲. If it’s a standard or model of some sort, that would be 典. If it’s a prayer or divine invocation, that would be 祝. If it’s a chronicle of some event, that would be 紀. If it is a virtue being preached, that would be 徳. If it’s a proclamation, that would be 宣. These ancient Japanese must have kept quite busy picking apart the subtle semantic differences in their native words in order to assign Chinese characters.

So when parents give their kids a name with NORI in it, they are injecting an element of higher truth revealed from above (whether they realize it or not).

By the way, the word noru survives today in the form of 名乗る/nanoru, meaning to declare your name.

Today’s bonus factoid: the word nori meaning seaweed, although unrelated to the nori meaning proclaim, is in fact related to the nori of schoolchildren’s paste; in the past the seaweed paste was used to glue things down.

Could this nori be related to the verb 乗る for climbing up on a stage or getting in a car, or 載る for something being loaded onto a dock? Or 上る/noboru? Could the meaning of noru really be that broad? Stay tuned.