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.