On the Origin of ‘Chounu’ (醜奴 )
“추노” 탐원
The paper intends to clarify several notions of the word, ‘Chounu’ (醜 奴). It is indeed a transliteration word which originated from Xianbei (鮮卑 ) language and was translated into the wolf. In history, the language contact of Chinese and minority languages has created a large amount of transliteration words. There are a lot of variants in Chinese classical literature: for example, ‘Chinu’ (叱奴 ), ‘Tunu’ (吐奴 ), ‘Chilu’ (叱盧 ), ‘China’ (赤那 ), and ‘Zhuonuo’ (綽諾 ). This paper considers that the white wolf (白狼 ) in Guoyu (《國語 》) glossed by Weizhao (韋昭 ) is inaccurate, and the correct interpretation is that the wolf is the totem of Quanrong (犬戎 ) tribe referring to the people of the Quanrong (犬戎 ) tribe. It reveals the value and significance of the study on words consisting of Chinese characters from the perspective of the language contact.