Does Siri really mean butt in Japanese?

There has been a thing going about since the Apple announcement of the IPhone 4S, iOS 5 and its new voice-activated assistant thingie Siri, that the word ‘siri’ means ‘butt’ in Japanese. It’s been mentioned on several “mainstream” sites such as CNET and MSNBC, and many English speakers have been retweeting this ‘fact’.

Well is it true? Not really.

One word for your seat in Japan is “shiri” (しり in hiragana, 尻 in kanji), which, if you are unfamiliar with Japanese, may look just like Siri. However, while Siri is pronounced ‘SI-ri’ with the accent on the first syllable, shiri is pronounced ‘shi-RI’, with the accent on the second syllable. This may not seem like much of a difference to you, but in Japanese there are dozens of words like that. Besides, Siri has a “s” while shiri has an “sh” sound, which are not the same thing either.

What does complicate matters a bit is that in Japanese, there is no clear “S” sound per se when paired with the ‘i’ sound. So, when Siri is transposed into Japanese phonetically, it does because “shiri”. However, it would still be pronounced “SHI-ri” (accent on first syllable), and most people whose sense of humor is not stuck in the 3rd grade would know the difference.

I follow the Japanese Twitter universe about as equally as I follow the English one. There have indeed been a few scattered sniggering mentions of Siri being shiri. Ironically though, quite a few of then were picking up on the mention of this in the English media and commenting on that (the circle jerk of social media?). However, the vast majority of people tweeting about the iPhone4S announcement were peeved that Siri is not yet available for Japanese. The iPhone is tremendously popular in Japan, and people are gagging to try this new cool voice activated assistant.

Some are even saying stuff like it’s a ‘major embarassment’ for Apple, and that they should even change the name before launching Siri in Japan. What bullshit. I’m sure some juveniles in Japan will snigger about it, but most will not care one bit. Apple Japan has a huge number of native Japanese employees. Do you think that one of them would not have spoken up if they had thought that the name Siri would be offensive in Japan? I mean, come on now. It’s just like when Apple did not see any problem with the name iPad, but some Beavis and Butthead types did. That faded pretty fast too.

Besides, Japanese people love butts. Unlike in English, where butt-related words and phrases such as “asshole” “asswipe” “rip you a new one” - oh, and “butthead” have negative, derogatory meanings, in Japanese the ass is mostly regarded as this cute, somewhat humorous thing, whether they belong to little kids or sumo wrestlers. Chris (an American who has been living in Japan since 1997) tweeted that Apple should even think about using a cute butt icon for Siri. It’s not such a bad idea, really. ^_^

I would tell MSNBC et. al. to get a clue, but I’ve basically given up on the English speaking ‘mainstream’ media to have any clue at all about Japan or Japanese culture. (You can peruse my more serious personal site for more about that if you’re interested.)

By the way, most Japanese people would call the butt “oshiri”, not “shiri”. Here are some words for the buttocks area in order of rudeness, starting with ones that are safe to use in front of a nice Japanese grandma.

• oshiri おしり
• hippu ヒップ　(derived from the English ‘hip’)
• bakku バック　(derived from the English ‘back’. Somewhat obscure, usually used in conjunction with other words Even more obscure and oblique would be the Japanese word for back, ushiro. )
• shiri 　しり　(yep, omitting the honorific ‘o’ makes it that much ruder)
• ketsu けつ