First opened Tuesday, October 12, 2010
頭
あたま
- tail-high (odaka): falls after mora 3
- middle-high (nakadaka): falls after mora 2
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).
head; mind, brains
Atama has an unknown derivation, with theories like heaven (a) plus ball (tama).
Taken apart
No breakdown is shown for this word: the only split Wiktionary offers is hedged (see the marked line below), and it doesn't spell the word — it describes where the sound may come from — so showing it as the word's parts would be a guess.
Written with 頭
In a sentence
頭を冷やせ。
Cool off!
頭を下げろ！
Duck!
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.
- Hedged“Probably from Old Japanese. First cited in the ten-volume Wamyō Ruijushō of 934 CE.”
- Hedged“Unknown derivation. Theories include:”
- “* Compound of 天(あ) (a, “heaven, sky”) + 玉(たま) (tama, “ball”). This is problematic phonetically, as 天 appears historically as ama or ame, not as just a.”
- “* Compound of 当(あ)て (ate, “putting something in contact”, 連(れん)用(よう)形(けい) (ren'yōkei, “stem or continuative form”) of the verb 当(あ)てる (ateru, “to hit”)) + 間(ま) (ma, “space, gap”), referring to the head as a moxibustion point. This is also problematic phonetically, as the shift from ate to ata necessitates a change in meaning of the underlying verb. This is also problematic semantically, as the term 間(ま) (ma) term refers more specifically to a gap or space.”
- “* Compound of 貴(あて) (ate, “noble”) + 間(ま) (ma, “space”), referring to the most important part of the body. However, the use of 間(ま) (ma) in this way is again problematic. Moreover, 貴(あて) (ate, “noble”) appears in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter dating to the 900s CE, while 頭(あたま) (atama) with a sense of fontanelle appears in the Wamyō Ruijushō dated 938 CE, leaving insufficient time for either the semantic or phonetic drift required.”
- Hedged“Historically, this term first appears with a sense of fontanelle, in reference to the soft place on the top of an infant's head where the bones of the skull have not yet fused. As such, a more likely derivation might be as a compound of 当(あ)た (ata, “not quite touching, not quite in contact”, 未(み)然(ぜん)形(けい) (mizenkei, “irrealis form”) of classical verb 当(あ)つ (atsu) and root of modern 当(あ)たる (ataru, “to touch, to come into contact”)) + 間(ま) (ma, “space, gap, opening”).”
Source: Wiktionary: 頭 (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 頭 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not あたま. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
かしら
- “From Old Japanese. Found as a standalone noun in the Man'yōshū, completed some time after 759 CE, and as a counter in the Kojiki, dating to 712 CE.”
かぶり
- “Cognate with and shift in meaning from かぶり (kaburi, “covering; hat, crown”), spelled in kanji as 被り or 冠.”
かぶ
- “From Old Japanese; first attested in the Kojiki (712), with the spelling 加夫, in spite that the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten lists the first attestation as from the late Muromachi period.”
- “Cognate with 株(かぶ) (kabu, “stump; root”), from a general sense of lump.”
つぶり
- “Cognate with 粒 (tsubu, “round thing”, such as a grain), 禿ぶ (tsubu, “to go bald”, from the idea of one's head becoming round), 円ら (tsubura, “round”, adjective), 潰れる (tsubureru, “to become rounded, as from wear and tear, or from crushing”).”
- “Some sources derive this as a shift from 円ら (tsubura, “round”, adjective). However, the phonology and semantics for this do not fit (changing /a/ to /i/, and repurposing the adjectivizing suffix ら to instead form a noun). The modern verb tsubureru had the form tsuburu in older stages of the language. The tsuburi reading for 頭 may more likely represent a nominalization derived from this older verb, following normal patterns for creating nouns from verbs.”
- “Compare Okinawan ちぶる (chiburu, “head”).”
つむり
- “From tsuburi above. Bilabial plosive /b/ becomes bilabial nasal /m/.”
つむ
- “Shortened from tsumuri above.”
こうべ
- “*/kamipe/ → */kampe/ → /kaube/ → /kɔːbe/ → /koːbe/”
- “Compound of either 上 (kami, “upper”) or 髪 (kami, “hair”) (likely cognates), with either 部 (be, “part, portion”) or 辺・方 (pe, “area; direction”).”
- “Listed in one resource as possibly an alteration from 頭 (kabu, “head”) + 上 (upe, “up”, Old Japanese reading).”
- “This reading is listed in some sources as attested in the Nihon Shoki of 720. However, this is based on traditional ruby glosses of the ideogrammatic spelling, and the glosses are from younger manuscripts.”
どたま
- “Contraction of ど (do-, “super-”, often used ironically as a derogatory prefix) + 頭 (atama, “head”).”
ず
- “/du/ → /d͡zu/ → /zu/”
- “From Middle Chinese 頭 (MC duw). The goon reading, so likely an earlier borrowing.”
とう
- “From Middle Chinese 頭 (MC duw). The kan'on reading, so likely a later borrowing. The shift from initial /d/ to voiceless /t/ is due to influence or reborrowing from a later stage of the Chinese language. Compare modern Mandarin reading tóu, Cantonese tau⁴, Min Nan tao⁵.”
What the labels mean
- 和語 Native Japanese
- Words that were already Japanese before Chinese vocabulary arrived — usually written with kun'yomi and often short.
- Compound
- Two or more words or stems joined into one.
- Derivation
- A word built from a stem plus a suffix or prefix.
- Sound change
- The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.
- Origin unclear
- Scholars disagree, or nobody knows.