I hope the title of this article intrigues you to read it article because you won’t understand what I mean by the title until I explain it.

Let me start from the beginning. An American friend of mine, Brenda, has a daughter who is dating a Japanese boy named Yoshi. Because I lived in Japan so long and studied the Chinese characters that the Japanese use, I wondered if Yoshi’s name is the Chinese character meaning righteousness.

The following is a conversation with Brenda through messenger:

Brenda tried to explain to Yoshi what I told her about the meaning of Yoshi’s name, but because his understanding of English is not so good he didn’t quite get the point. She therefore asked me to write him an explaination in Japanese which I did. And I included two Scriptures.

John 1:29  ¶The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

1 Corinthians 1:30  But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:

Brenda sent my Japanese text to Yoshi and he replied:

Brenda asked:

I explained to Brenda that though the Chinese character of Yoshi’s name is in 1 Corinthians 10:30, but it’s not pronounced the same way as his name. In the verse it’s pronounced “gi”, righteousness. For every loan word Japan gets from China, there is at least one Chinese way of saying it, and a Japanese way of saying it. As a general rule, the Japanese way is multisyllabic, and the Chinese way is a single syllable. But no matter how you say it, the meaning of the word remains the same.

Brenda is excited that Yoshi got a witness for Christ based on the meaning of his own name!

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