東雲 = しののめ (a place name in Tokyo)

I was asked about this by a fellow long-term resident as we cycled around Tokyo. “Is しの a kosher reading for 東 or did I read the map wrong?” Didn’t know, so a-Googling I did go.

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My dictionary gives しの as one of several readings for 東. While useful for practical purposes, e.g., searching for something, this turns out to be grammatically incorrect.

東雲（しののめ）belongs to the group of words called 熟字訓 (じゅくじくん) in which two or more kanji must be considered a set with a reading that cannot be broken down into readings of the individual characters.

Familiar examples include 昨日（きのう）[“yesterday”], 大人（おとな）[adult], 土産（みやげ）[souvenir], 煙草（たばこ）[tobacco] and 五月雨（さみだれ）[early-summer frikkin’ annoying intermittent rain but not actually in actual May because this is from the goddamn lunar calendar of yore [smh]].

The learner asks: “Sensei, in 大人, is it 大＝おと and 人＝な or is it 大＝お and 人＝とな?”

“Silly rabbit”, replies the teacher. “Your question is wrong. 大人 is おとな and that is all there is to it. You’ll understand when you grow up [lol noob]”

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東雲（しののめ）as a word means daybreak, or specifically the clouds that linger in the eastern sky as day breaks.

My reasonably-educated guess is that such words predate Japan’s adoption of Chinese script. Slap some kanji onto this word – doesn’t matter if they are not pronounced the same way so long as they look right. If everyone agrees that we write AB this but say eff-jee in this special case, then that’s language. (c.f. “boatswain”)

These 熟字訓 words are thus a special case of indivisible sets of 当て字, which itself encompasses two literally opposite phenomena:

当て字 [あてじ: ATEJI] ① kanji used as a phonetic symbol, instead of for the meaning ● phonetic-equivalent character ● substitute character ② kanji used for their meaning, irrespective of reading.

I suspect 東雲 is the only case of a word written 東〜 being pronounced しの〜、and I have been unable to find another example.

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Whaddaya think, Reddit? Do you have ‘favorite’ examples of 熟字訓 that trip you up or that you like to deploy as a flex? Any gaping holes in my analysis?