"海豚" meaning in Japanese

See 海豚 in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: [iɾɯ̟ka̠] Forms: 海豚 [canonical] (ruby: 海豚(いるか)), 海豚 [canonical] (ruby: 海豚(イルカ)), iruka [romanization]
Etymology: From Old Japanese. Attested in the Kojiki of 712 CE with the phonetic spelling 入鹿魚. Further etymology Uncertain. One of the possible native-Japanese theories is that this was originally a compound of Old Japanese elements 魚 (iwo, “fish”) + 食 (uka, “food, something used as food”), with the following sound shifts. :/iwo uka/ → /iru uka/ → /iruka/ Another possibility is that it was a borrowing from Ainu. Compare Sakhalin Ainu リク (riku), イリク (iriku), or Kuril Ainu リカ (rika, “whale”). Given the unlikely sound shift required for the Old Japanese derivation and the lack of cognates in the Ryukyuan languages (see Proto-Ryukyuan *peto), an origin from Ainu seems more likely. The spelling 海豚, which literally means “sea pig”, is from Chinese 海豚 (hǎitún). Etymology templates: {{inh|ja|ojp|-}} Old Japanese, {{C.E.|nodots=1}} CE, {{CE}} CE, {{lang|ja|入鹿魚}} 入鹿魚, {{unc|ja}} Uncertain, {{m+|ojp|-}} Old Japanese, {{compound|ja|魚|食|t1=fish|t2=food, something used as food|tr1=iwo|tr2=uka}} 魚 (iwo, “fish”) + 食 (uka, “food, something used as food”), {{bor|ja|ain|-}} Ainu, {{cog|ain|リク|tr=riku}} Ainu リク (riku), {{cog|ain|リカ||whale|tr=rika}} Ainu リカ (rika, “whale”), {{noncog|jpx-ryu-pro|*peto}} Proto-Ryukyuan *peto, {{lang|ja|海豚}} 海豚, {{der|ja|zh|海豚}} Chinese 海豚 (hǎitún) Head templates: {{ja-noun|いるか|イルカ}} 海豚(いるか) or 海豚(イルカ) • (iruka)
  1. a dolphin or porpoise (the mammal) Wikipedia link: Dolphin, Kojiki, ja:海豚 Derived forms: 海豚座 (Irukaza) (ruby: 海豚(いるか), ()) (english: Dolphin constellation, Delphinus), 鼠海豚: harbor porpoise (nezumi iruka) (ruby: 鼠海豚(ねずみいるか)) (taxonomic: Phocoena phocoena) Related terms: 鱪, 鱰 (shīra) (ruby: (しいら), (しいら)) (english: a dolphin fish, a dorado fish)

Alternative forms

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Download raw JSONL data for 海豚 meaning in Japanese (4.0kB)

{
  "called_from": "parser/1336",
  "msg": "no corresponding start tag found for </span>",
  "path": [
    "海豚"
  ],
  "section": "Japanese",
  "subsection": "noun",
  "title": "海豚",
  "trace": ""
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable Japanese dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-05-29 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-05-20 using wiktextract (e937b02 and f1c2b61). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.