Musashi

Musashi is a Japanese male name. The etymology behind the name is uncertain. It’s written with the hiragana 武 mu “warrior; military; chivalry; arms” and 蔵 sashi “storehouse; warehouse”. However, there are theories that it derives from the Ainu language from the word muzashi which comes from an older word munzashi which could be derived from Aini mun (grass, weeds), sa (open, exposed, a plain open field) and hi, a third-person possessive suffix, essentially meaning “grassy field/plain” or “weedy field/plain”. Another theory I’ve seen is that it may have been based on an older place name, Musa 身狭 which was divided into two sections, upper Musa-gami 身狭上 and lower Musa-shimo身狭下 and that it’s a corruption of the latter. Musashi in hiragana is むさし and in katakana it’s written as ムサシ.

The most famous bearer of the name is Miyamoto Musashi (Miyamoto being the family name), a famous samurai in the 16th or 17th century. He founded the two-sword style of swordsmanship and wrote The Book of Five Rings which is a book on strategy, tactics and philosophy which still seems to be popular today. Musashi was not his real name, believed to have been taken from a monk named Musashibō Benkei.

Origin: Ainu, Japanese

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