In Yugioh 5D's, the protagonist's name is Yuusei (遊星). All Yugioh protagonists have Yuu (遊) in their name, because they're good at games (e.g. the first protag's name is 遊戯{ゆうぎ}, meaning games, and 遊戯王{ゆうぎおう} is literally "the king of games"). In 5D's, the stars are important, so I thought 星 was fitting. But when you look it up, 遊星 means "planet" apparently, which I find kind of odd. I know 惑星{わくせい} is the common word for planet, but I haven't heard 遊星 to mean planet, and I mainly wonder why 遊 (play) is at all relevant to the meaning? Or is it just one of those things that just is and we accept it? Like how America is 米国 for some reason (probably related to some Chinese phonetic pronunciation thing).
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2Few people know 遊星 is an old word for "wandering stars", or what we now know as planets. Based on your description, the combination of 遊 and 星 may be a simple coincidence. Other Japanese words that contain 遊 meaning "travel" include 回遊魚, 外遊 and 遊説.– narutoCommented Jun 2 at 0:53
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FYI 遊星歯車 "planetary gear" is I think the only word 遊星 is solely used today instead of 惑星.– broccoli forestCommented Jun 10 at 15:47
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1 Answer
When it comes to etymology, looking up the historical meaning(s) of individual characters on Wiktionary can prove helpful.
In the case of 遊, the first two meanings they list are: 1) travel, tour; 2) wander, roam. I think 2) is the relevant one here - compare the etymology of planet < planasthai = to wander, presumably due to their apparent "wandering" orbit in the night sky.
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3As additional detail for other word nerds 😄, the word 惑星【わくせい】 is first cited to 1792, while 遊星【ゆうせい】 appears later in 1823, albeit with the older spelling 游星. Both 游 and 遊 have older senses of "wander", hence their use in this compound. Both seem to be calques (terms based on translating the parts of the source term) of Dutch dwaalster ("wander star"). Commented May 31 at 17:11