On 14/12/2013 23:39, Stewart Robert Hinsley wrote:
On 14/12/2013 15:53, Emery Davis wrote:
On Fri, 13 Dec 2013 19:11:23 +0000, Jeff Layman wrote:

On 12/12/2013 21:58, Emery Davis wrote:

Another place to get the correct Japanese spellings in our alphabet is:

http://homepage2.nifty.com/chigyoraku/Etop11.html

[]
I seem to think there is some site which has a lot of translations, but
can't lay my hands on it here; I'll have to check bookmarks this
weekend.

Well, I must have been imagining it for the online resource. Looking at
"Japanese Maples" 4th Ed I do see that many names (or most?) are
translated, e.g. opening at random I'm informed that 'Oto hime' means
"little queen of the undersea world." Wow!

"Mermaid Princess"?

From a Romaji to English translation page I find the "hime" means
princess, noble woman, girl; but I was unable to find a relevant meaning
for "oto" (or "ooto", "otoo" or "ootoo"). (Transliteration of Japanese
sometimes uses doubled vowel letters or vowel letters with macrons to
denote long vowels.)

I suspect it may be the same oto as in otome (girl, maiden) kanji single
stroke looks like a cross between a curly Z and an L.

My kanji dictionary gives otohime as "youngest princess".

--
Regards,
Martin Brown