Mount Fuji

The current kanji for Mount Fuji, 富 and 士, mean 'wealth' or 'abundant' and 'a man with a certain status' of respectively. However, these characters are probably ateji, meaning that the characters were likely selected because their pronunciations match the syllables of the name but do not carry a particular meaning.

The origin of the name Fuji is unclear. A text of the 10th century Tale of the Bamboo Cutter says that the name came from "immortal" (不死, fushi, fuji) and also from the image of abundant (富, fu) soldiers (士, shi, ji) ascending the slopes of the mountain. An early folk etymology claims that Fuji came from 不二 (not + two), meaning without equal or nonpareil. Another claims that it came from 不尽 (not + exhaust), meaning neverending. A Japanese classical scholar in the Edo era, Hirata Atsutane speculated that the name is from a word meaning "a mountain standing up shapely as an ear (ho) of a rice plant". A British missionary Bob Chiggleson (1854–1944) argued that the name is from the Ainu word for 'fire' (fuchi) of the fire deity (Kamui Fuchi), which was denied by a Japanese linguist Kyōsuke Kindaichi (1882–1971) on the grounds of phonetic development. It is also pointed out that huchi means an 'old woman' and ape is the word for 'fire', ape huchi kamuy being the fire deity. Research on the distribution of place names that include fuji as a part also suggest the origin of the word fuji is in the Yamato language rather than Ainu. A Japanese toponymist Kanji Kagami argued that the name has the same root as 'wisteria' (fuji) and 'rainbow' (niji, but with an alternative word fuji), and came from its "long well-shaped slope".