Looking for kanji equivalents

Hello, I'm looking for help translating a few things, along with their Kanji equivalents.

The first one is, "Eimu Shokujou."
It's supposed to be a name, but I cannot find the meaning of either of the words. A friend of mine helped me come up with it about six years ago, but I have since lost touch with them and can't get in touch with them anymore.

The second one is supposed to have a dual meaning and it is, "Hakumori."
Just like with the other one, the same friend helped me come up with this. From what I can remember, it is supposed to have a dual meaning where one is some kind of forest, and the other has something to do with a spider trap, or something along those lines.

Any help with these would be greatly appreciated.

Arekkusu666 said:

The first one is, "Eimu Shokujou." It's supposed to be a name, but I cannot find the meaning of either of the words. A friend of mine helped me come up with it about six years ago

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"Eimu" does not occur in the dictionary and "shokujou" only turns up "ceremonial staff". By "come up with", do you mean that it's made up and not actually a real word/name? There are many kanji that match each of the readings "ei", "mu", "shoku" and "jou", so really it could be anything. Is it supposed to be the name of a person, a place..?

If you slightly change it to "reimu shokudou" (霊夢食堂), you get "revelation cafetaria"

Arekkusu666 said:

The second one is supposed to have a dual meaning and it is, "Hakumori." Just like with the other one, the same friend helped me come up with this. From what I can remember, it is supposed to have a dual meaning where one is some kind of forest, and the other has something to do with a spider trap, or something along those lines.

Click to expand...

"Kumo" can mean "spider" (蜘蛛) or "cloud" (雲) and "mori" (森) means "forest". A trap (for catching animals) is a "wana" (罠) which is not part of the word.

lanthas said:

"Eimu" does not occur in the dictionary and "shokujou" only turns up "ceremonial staff". By "come up with", do you mean that it's made up and not actually a real word/name? There are many kanji that match each of the readings "ei", "mu", "shoku" and "jou", so really it could be anything. Is it supposed to be the name of a person, a place..?

If you slightly change it to "reimu shokudou" (霊夢食堂), you get "revelation cafetaria"


"Kumo" can mean "spider" (蜘蛛) or "cloud" (雲) and "mori" (森) means "forest". A trap (for catching animals) is a "wana" (罠) which is not part of the word.

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I don't know if she completely made it up or not. She seemed to be able to speak Japanese fluently, so all I have to go on is what she told me. Eimu Shokujou was the name of a sword.

I know that Mori is forest, and Kumo is spider. From what I recall when she explained it to me, the overall name "Hakumori" had one meaning when using the kanji. I believe it was Haku Mori. However, if you separated the kanji into its individual parts, it would read completely differently, and all I remember is that it had something to do with a spider. It was vaguely along the lines of a spider lying in wait, or sleeping, or something. But not using those exact words. It was something like Ha Kumo Ri.

Again, it was six or more years ago, so I'm trying to piece together what information I can recall.

Google search results suggest that it's not the name of either a really existing sword or a widely-known imaginary sword in fictions such like Bleach. Thus, no one knows the correct kanji except the one who named it.

It's impossible to specify the kanji from the information "some kind of forest". As for spider trap thing, she would be talking about the meaning of the word in case of being written in hiragana. I can't think of any "ha" or "ri" that can have the meaning "trap", though.

Toritoribe said:

Google search results suggest that it's not the name of either a really existing sword or a widely-known imaginary sword in fictions such like Bleach. Thus, no one knows the correct kanji except the one who named it.

It's impossible to specify the kanji from the information "some kind of forest". As for spider trap thing, she would be talking about the meaning of the word in case of being written in hiragana. I can't think of any "ha" or "ri" that can have the meaning "trap", though.

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Alright, well since there is no actual meaning for Eimu Shokujou, I'll just have to deal with that. What about the individual parts? Perhaps "ei" "imu" "mu" "sho" "hoku" or "kujou"? As for the dual meaning of "Hakumori", the best my memory serves is just "some kind of forest." I'm trying to break down the individual parts into their kanji, hiragana, or katakana equivalents so I can try to piece things together. I don't remember which one she had used, and I've been having one hell of a time trying to figure this out.

I don't recall which parts of "Hakumori" were separated, but I'm sure that "kumo" was in it, since that means spider.

As already mentioned, each of those parts matches multiple kanji. For example, the kanji 栄 (glory), 衛 (defence), 永 (eternal) and 影 (shadow) all have the "ei" reading. Both 職 (employment) and 食 (food) can be read as "shoku"; or if you split it up, "sho" could be 書 (writing) or 初 (first), while "ku" could be 苦 (hardship) or 区 (section). "jou" could be from 場 (place), 情 (feeling), 常 (normal), 上 (above) and so on and so on. Think about it - if each of those readings would match to a unique meaning, there would be no reason for kanji to exist.

Not to mention, the above list of candidates is far from complete and still assumes that the original was using common kanji (not rare/obscure ones) and a regular pronunciation (there are plenty of words and names in Japanese that are pronounced differently from how they are written, so there's a good precedent for doing the same with a made-up word).

In short, it's completely hopeless. Too much information has been lost.

Agreed. According to a kanji dictionary 新字源, which contains approximately 10,000 kanji, the numbers of each reading kanji are;

e 27
i 133
ei 75
mu 25
sho 65
ku 92
shoku 52
jo 23
u 43
jou 116

Thus, the number of possible combinations is countless.

Ah, I was unaware there were so many possibilities. In that case, thank you both for the information you've given me.