Hello, I was wondering about the word "Suzaku" broken down in to two parts and I haven't found what I am looking for while searching on google.
The 'su' is the color vermilion but I was wondering if I can use the kanji for "ko"(child) for Su because one of "ko"s onyomi reading is "Su". I am just wondering if this will be still correct?
Also, for "zaku", does it actually mean sparrow? I only saw one reference on google that says this while the dictionaries doesn't mention it.
I know that "Suzaku" refers to the bird but I wanted to know it broken down and more specifically, if I can use the kanji for "ko" for the "Su" part. I hope this makes sense. THank you
朱雀 is already written like this in Chinese, so it is unlikely that the kanji writing would vary. In my (limited) experience this only happens when the word is of Japanese origin and a kanji had to be found for it in Japan.
As for the meaning of 子 when read -su: from the examples I can think of it is only used as a meaningless nominal suffix imported from Chinese, like in 椅子，様子 ...
Probably, the pronunciation of "su" isn't used to mean "child" but there might be some in very old Japanese which I don't know.
Usually, "shi" is used to mean "child"
男子（だんし danshi) -男の子 boy
女子（じょし jyoshi）－女の子 girl
養子（ようし youshi）－adopted child
As you know、 朱雀 isn't a sparrow. It's a phoenix in red color.
朱雀 also pronunced "syuzaku" or "syujyaku"
Personally, I read it "syujyaku" because "syu" expresses the color of the phoenix.
I 'll give you another example for "子” for "Su"
様子(ようす）: It's called "you su" means situation.
彼はおどろいた様子でした。- he seemed to be surprised.
どんな様子か見てみよう。- Let's see how's it going.
Suzaku is written as "朱雀".
As you said ”朱(su)" means the color vermilion, and "雀(zaku)" means sparrow.
You can not use "子(child)" in this case.
子 is usually pronounced as "Shi", and it's very rare to read as "su". (ex. 扇子(Sen-su))
