Chinese languages

My son is looking up what this word means...and we cannot figure it out. If anyone can please help, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much. The word is.......Gohan
If anyone could please tell me what this means?????
Yours Truly,
~Michele~
Peanutshell56@aol.com

Gohan? So help give me some context for my further explantion. You see, these roman letters "Gohan" don't convey anything meaningful in alphabetic chinese. I guess the spelling is wrong. Well, I suggest you use Pinyin so that it will facilitate your study. Un Beso, Chao!

Dear Michelle,

Do you mean the character “Gohan” from the Japanese series of anime television shows, videos, movies, comic books, etc?

All I know about the series is that it is hugely popular and that the first season or so of the series was based upon the Chinese book “Journey To The West and that the creator of the series named many of the characters in the series after food or food-related terms; many dealing with Chinese food.

Is the character at the following link the “Gohan” that your son is asking about?

http://magarinken.hp.infoseek.co.jp/42.png

The characters on the picture are 悟飯 (Mand: wu4 fan4, Cant: ng6 faan6) which translates to “comprehend rice” in Chinese which doesn’t seem to make much sense. Perhaps, in Japanese it means more.

I tried to gain more insight at the official Dragonball web site but I couldn’t find anything. Perhaps you can find something.

http://www.dragonball.com/

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.

Kobo-Daishi wrote:
>
> Do you mean the character “Gohan” from the Japanese series
> of anime television shows, videos, movies, comic books, etc?
> All I know about the series is that it is hugely popular and
> that the first season or so of the series was based upon the
> Chinese book “Journey To The West and that the creator of
> the series named many of the characters in the series after
> food or food-related terms; many dealing with Chinese food.
> Is the character at the following link the “Gohan” that
> your son is asking about?
> http://magarinken.hp.infoseek.co.jp/42.png
> The characters on the picture are 悟飯 (Mand: wu4 fan4, Cant:
> ng6 faan6) which translates to “comprehend rice” in Chinese
> which doesn’t seem to make much sense. Perhaps, in Japanese
> it means more.

I don't know anything about Dragonball either, but I did also suspect that
this "Gohan" is probably the name of a character from that comic book and
cartoon series. In that case, it is a Japanese (not Chinese!) word "gohan",
which just means 'meal'.

The word "gohan" 御飯 is literally a polite prefix "go" 御 (imperial), plus
"han" 飯 (cooked rice), but both parts are fused together now, and it is not
to be taken literally as "the emperor's rice" or "the emperor's meal". You
can even forget that the "go" prefix is even 御 (imperial), since it is more
commonly written in kana.

Kobo, you found 悟飯 (to realize + cooked rice)--is that how the character's
name is written? That is also pronounced "gohan" in Japanese, so I suspect
it is some kind of pun. Especially since the Gohan character is supposed
to be the son of Gokuu 悟空--note the same first character in the given name
of both father and son. Also note that SON Gokuu 孫悟空 bears the same name
and is loosely based on the character from a Chinese novel, SUN Wukong, the
Monkey King.

The pun doesn't work in Chinese though, since 御飯 is "yufan" in Mandarin,
and 悟飯 is "wufan". (Doesn't work in Cantonese either.)

I'd say that on a practical level, "Gohan" doesn't really mean anything--it's
just a name.


Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu

Thank you all so much for your help...and you are RIGHT! It DOES mean "Cooked Rice"! Good job! Yes, it is a name from the Dragonball Z cartoon. And there were four choices to pick from and "cooked rice" was one of them. It was the only one that came even remotely close to the possible interpretations that you all gave me. So, this MUST be it! Thanks again for all of your help, it is much appreciated!
~Michele~