ハシカシ

Baekje

Etymology

Analyzed by John Bentley as equivalent to Middle Korean 벗〯 (pěs, “friend, companion”) + 갓 (kàs, “woman”).

Noun

ハシカシ (*pasIkasI)

1. (royal) consort

   Synonym: 於陸 (*oluk, *oruk, “queen”)

Reconstruction notes

Appears in katakana glosses to the Nihon shoki for Classical Chinese 夫人 (fūrén, “consort”) in the Baekje context, notably to refer to Queen Eun'go, the final Baekje queen consort.

As the Book of Zhou states that 於陸 (*oluk) was used by the Baekje nobility to refer to the queen without giving the equivalent term used by commoners, Japanese linguist Kōno Rokurō speculated that this was the commoners' word not mentioned by Zhou.

References

• John Bentley (2000) “New Look at Paekche and Korean: Data from Nihon shoki”, in Language Research‎^[1], volume 36, number 2, Seoul National University, pages 417—443
• Alexander Vovin (2005) “Koguryo and Paekche: Different Languages or Dialects of Old Korean?”, in Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies, volume 2, number 2, Koguryo Research Foundation, pages 108—140