孤

This week I have been telling my students about the Intyatyambo orphanage I visited on a recent trip to South Africa and thus inadvertently learnt the following words:

孤児　－　こじ　－ orphan　
孤児院　－　こじいん　－ orphanage

The meaning of the kanji are as follows: solitary + child + institution. Sad little words, aren't they?

I think it's worth taking a look at each kanji individually so today let's focus on 孤 and first of all its component parts. The left part of the kanji is 子 (SHI - ko) meaning child. The component on the right is 瓜 which is usually red as URI and means melon, gourd or cucurbit. うり bears more than a passing resemblance to 爪 (TSUME) meaning nail or claw. Just remember that URI has an extra nail on the bottom there and TSUME (meaning nail) does not. Or as my kanji dictionary says: 「うり（瓜）につめあり、つめ（爪）につめなし」。Now, why child + gourd should denote solitude, I have no idea, but just imagine a poor solitary bairn with only one single solitary gourd to play with and the kanji should stick in your mind.

Incidentally, 瓜 has some interesting idioms attached to it:

うりのつるになすびはならぬ。

Literally: gourd vines won't make eggplants, or as we might say "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

And 瓜二つである is equivalent to as alike as two peas in a pod.

Getting back to 孤 (KO), be sure not to confuse it with super similar 弧 (KO) which has a a bow component on the left and thus describes an arc. Here are some words containing 孤:

孤独 - kodoku - solitude (there's a very nice shochu called 百年の孤独 - one hundred years of solitude).
孤島 - kotou - a remote or desert island
孤立 - koritsu - isloation
孤高 - kokou - aloof
孤城 - kojou - an isolated or besieged castle

Tomorrow we will look at 児.