Hiragana
/ˌhɪrəˈɡɑːnə/noun
A Japanese syllabary consisting of flowing characters used for native words, grammatical elements, and pronunciation guides.
Did you know?During the Heian period, hiragana was sometimes called onnade, “women’s hand,” because court women used it extensively for literature—including The Tale of Genji—though men also used it.
Etymological Timeline
Ancient China
Chinese
假名
““Borrowed name” or “provisional name,” referring to characters used for their sound rather than their original meaning”
Nara Period
Japanese
man'yōgana
“Chinese characters used phonetically to write Japanese sounds, the main ancestor of kana scripts”
Heian Period
Japanese
仮名 (kana)
“A shortened form of karina, “provisional name,” for phonetic use of Chinese characters”
9th–10th Century
Japanese
平仮名 (hiragana)
““Flat” or “ordinary kana,” formed from highly cursive versions of man'yōgana characters”
11th Century
Japanese
ひらがな
“The flowing syllabary increasingly used in diaries, poetry, fiction, and court writing”
Modern English
English
hiragana
“The Japanese syllabary written in rounded, cursive-derived characters”