Eye
Eyes are a central concept in Go, since two eyes guarantee the life of a group and one eye can mean a great advantage in a capturing race.
In general, what Go players call an eye is an empty space surrounded by stones of one colour[1], the simplest forms of which are the single point eyes.
Here are single point eyes in the centre (unmarked), at the side (marked ) and in the corner (marked
).
However, larger surrounded spaces can also be called eyes. For these we refer to eyespace, eyes collection and life and death.
For a more thorough explanation of single point eyes, we refer to recognizing an eye. Also, beware of a false eye that may look like an eye.
There is much discussion on the definition of what is an eye and what is not. The discussions of technical algorithmic definitions is meant mainly for mathematicians and computer programmers, for whom absolute precision is needed.
Proto- For such an essential concept in Go, I am surprised that I haven't seen a single Japanese Go term for this. The closest I've come across is dame, but that has other capacities and it seems to me that using that term for eyes bends controversiality so much that it breaks through to just being wrong. I would like to be enlightened as to what the Japanese term would be as well as being directed to somewhere that uses the term that I might have missed.
Hikaru79- It seems to me that dame is completely wrong. It means Neutral Point, not eye at all. Running a 'translate' command on IGS, it returns 'me' as the Japanese term for eye. The Chinese is Yan.
KarlKnechtel: As far as I know, 'me' is correct, as in MeAriMeNashi for example.
SodaClub?: People in my local Go club (Osaka, Japan) use the term 目, read "me". I think it is the official term.
See also:
[1] This "definition" of the term eye includes false eyes. If this is done then groups with two eyes might be dead.
According to the definition above, the circle point is an eye.
Actually it is not easy to give a complete shape definition of eye. It would have to exclude false eyes, as in the diagram above, and include the marked points in the following diagram: