honcho > honchas

[Mike Speriosu]

> Doesn't Japanese have affixes that are gender specific?  Such as -ko
> added to a given name for a female child?  (On the other hand, the
> couple of on-line dictionaries I consulted didn't add "female" to
> their definitions as "child".)  Perhaps that's what Michael T.
> Wescoat was referring to when he wrote "cho" was gender-neutral.
>
While it's true that modern Japanese names ending in "-ko" are almost
exclusively given to females, the character itself simply means "child"
(genderless). I don't have any exact dates off hand, but I've been told
many times by native speakers that "-ko" names actually used to be given
to boys instead.

There is no gender marking on common nouns whatsoever in Japanese (as
there is in Spanish, German, Latin, etc.). Think of names ending in
"-ko" as similar to English names ending in "-a", e.g. "Amanda",
"Felicia", or "Brenda". They are a trend but not quite a rule: names
like "Jonah" are acceptable male names. Of course, much of this is
probably due to the fact that names given to native English speakers
come from a huge variety of other languages, unlike Japanese names.

Mike Speriosu

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