Etymology of Kaede

Japanese kaede ‘maple tree’ came from Old Japanese kapyerude (which looks exactly like a compound ‘frog hand’). It can be hard to know whether words like this are really odd-looking compounds or were distorted from their original form by folk etymology. It is possible that ‘frog hand’ refers to the appearance of the leaves, similar to open hands, but who can know what people thought in the past? It’s also possible this compound was also, or first, used for lily pads or plants of similar shape associated with frogs. Trying to judge with insufficient knowledge can be tricky, since even words like crocodile come from unexpected compounds (it meant ‘pebble-skinned’, which, though a good description of what their skin looks like, certainly isn’t the first thing that would come to mind from seeing a crocodile for the first time).