First opened Friday, July 3, 2009
天皇
てんのう
- middle-high (nakadaka): falls after mora 3
How to read it: a line over a kana means the voice is high there, and ↓ marks where it drops. A kana with no line is low. With no ↓ the pitch stays high to the end and does not drop even on a following particle (が, は).
Emperor of Japan
The Emperor is the “heavenly sovereign” — and the の is a sound that crept in between.
Taken apart
No breakdown is shown for this word: Wiktionary's text for it doesn't give a split that spells the word and joins to its reading, and any other split would be a guess.
In a sentence
天皇は国家の象徴である。
The Emperor shall be the symbol of the State.
Sentences are from Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR), picked by fixed rules from a dated export and shown unchanged. Nobody has reviewed them one by one.
What Wiktionary says
Quoted line by line from Wiktionary's Etymology section for this reading, taken from one dated dump so it can't change underneath us. Nothing below is paraphrased.
Not settled
Wiktionary itself hedges on part of this word's origin — those lines are marked below.
- “From Middle Chinese 天皇 (MC then hwang) with the original sense of “heavenly sovereign”.”
- Hedged“The 呉(ご)音(おん) (goon, literally “Wu sound”) pronunciation, so likely the initial borrowing from Middle Chinese. The ō reading for 皇 changes to nō as an instance of renjō (連(れん)声(じょう)).”
Source: Wiktionary: 天皇 (dump of 2026-09-02), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Reading, meaning and part of speech from JMdict, and kanji readings from KANJIDIC2 (EDRDG).
Other readings of 天皇 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not てんのう. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
てんこう
- “/ten kʷau/ → /tenkʷɔː/ → /tenkɔː/ → /tenkoː/”
- “From Middle Chinese 天皇 (MC then hwang).”
- “The 漢(かん)音(おん) (kan'on, literally “Han sound”) pronunciation, so likely a later borrowing from Middle Chinese.”
すべらぎ
- “/sumeraɡi/ → /suberaɡi/”
- “Shift from sumeragi below, with the nasal /m/ becoming a plosive /b/.”
- “The kanji spelling is from tennō above.”
すめらぎ
- “⟨sume₁ro₂ki₁⟩ → */sumʲerəkʲi/ → */sumeraki/ → /sumeraɡi/”
- “Possibly a shift from Old Japanese 天皇 (sume₁ro₂ki₁).”
- “The kanji spelling is from tennō above.”
すめらぎみ
- “From 皇(すめら) (sumera-, prefix of praise and respect) + 君(きみ) (kimi, “lord, master → sovereign”). The kimi changes to gimi as an instance of rendaku (連濁).”
- “The kanji spelling is from tennō above.”
すめらみこと
- “From Old Japanese.”
- “From 皇(すめら) (sumera-, prefix of praise and respect) + 尊(みこと) (mikoto, “Highness”).”
- “The kanji spelling is from tennō above.”
What the labels mean
- 漢語 Sino-Japanese
- Words built from Chinese-derived morphemes — borrowed from Chinese or coined in Japan out of Chinese parts — read with on'yomi.
- Borrowing
- Taken over from another language.