Etymology of Go

    Keywords: Culture & History

"Go" comes from Japanese igo 囲碁 which in turn comes from Chinese weiqi 圍棋 (simplified: 围棋).

In Chinese, wei 圍 means "surrounding" and qi 棋 (see ki character) means "board game" (also used for Chinese chess); weiqi is thus "the game of surrounding".

囲 is the Japanese simplification of 圍. It is used in conjunction with the go character 碁 to refer to the game in Japanese.

See also names for go in other languages.


This is a copy of the living page "Etymology of Go" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2007 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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