Tsukiookami

Where the name comes from

• Japanese
  Moon wolf
  月 tsuki 'moon' + 狼 ookami 'wolf'
  Tsukiookami is a modern nickname, not a traditional given name. It joins two ordinary Japanese words. Tsuki means the moon. Japan's major dictionary calls it the heavenly body closest to Earth and its only satellite. An older form, tsuku, survives in old words like tsukuyo 'moonlit night,' and it may preserve an earlier stage of the word. Ookami means wolf. The Digital Daijisen dictionary explains it as meaning 'great god' (大神, oho-kami). The word goes back at least about 1,300 years. One early example is in the Nihon Shoki chronicle. From the Middle Ages, people also often said ookame. The kanji 狼 is on Japan's official list of characters approved for personal names.

Tsukiookami across traditions

• Japanese wolf belief (Shinto and mountain worship). Japanese dictionaries describe a long tradition of fear and reverence for the wolf. An old name for it was makami, 'true god.' Dictionaries say people called the wolf a god out of awe. The poetry collection Man'yoshu, compiled about 1,250 years ago, has the phrase Oguchi no makami, 'big-mouthed true god.' It shows that the wolf was treated as sacred by that time. Wolves were believed to understand human speech, to punish wicked people, and to protect good ones. In medieval literature, mountain gods sometimes appear as wolves.
• Mitsumine Shrine, Chichibu, Saitama. Mitsumine Shrine honors the wolf as a divine attendant called Ōguchi no Magami. Mitsumine belief spread from the middle of the Edo period, about 300 years ago. People hung the shrine's 'Honorable Dog' (O-inu) talismans on their doors to ward off fire and theft. Wolf images also appear at other shrines, such as Yamazumi Shrine in Shizuoka.
• Natural history. The Japanese wolf was the only large meat-eating predator on Japan's main islands. It is believed to have died out in the early 1900s.

Who carried it

• Rumina Sato (佐藤ルミナ) (Born 1973; active in the 1990s and 2000s): Japanese mixed martial artist, famous in the Shooto organization in the 1990s and 2000s. Tsukiookami, "Moon Wolf," is his ring nickname, not his legal name.

Forms in other languages

月狼, つきおおかみ, ツキオオカミ, Tsuki Ookami, Tsuki Ōkami, Tsukiōkami, Tsukiokami

Tsukiookami in letter-number systems

Hebrew, Greek and other traditions gave every letter a number, and read meaning into the totals. These are the counts, computed; the readings are inside the Innerverse.