Surname · Chinese · Japanese
源
“water”·“origin, source”
源 (Minamoto) is a surname from Old Japanese. It is used in Chinese and Japanese.
Chinese and JapaneseWritten in Chinese characters script. In English: Minamoto.
Meaning & origin
What it means
源 is built from elements meaning “water” and “origin, source”.
Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
How it developed
Built from Japanese 水 (mi, “water”) + な (na) + 元, 本 (moto, “origin, source”).
Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
源’s family of names
In Japanese usage, 源 as a surname can be written in the Roman alphabet as MINAMOTO. In Japanese usage, 源 as a surname has a transliteration in みなもと. In Japanese usage, 源 as a surname has a transliteration in ガン.
Inner ring: spellings · outer: across languages.
Spellings & scripts 6
The same name written differently, including transliterations into other scripts.
Across languages 5
Equivalents and cognates in other languages, plus older forms it grew from.
People named 源
- Gen ShojiJapanese association football playerborn 1992
- Gen HoshinoJapanese singer-songwriter, actor, writer, radio personalityborn 1981
- Liu YuanGeneral of the People's Liberation Army, son of former President Liu Shaoqiborn 1951
Listed by how widely each person is written about, which says nothing about the name itself.
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