少林流空手道 shōrinryū karatedō Shorin-Ryu Karate-Do

少林 shōrin is written as the short name of the Shaolin temple; this design uses 少 (read shō) meaning little and 林 (read rin) meaning grove, the temple's own characters, with 流 (read ryū), a school. Between 1922 and 1940 the sound shōrin was printed four ways in karate, 昭林, 少林, 照林 and 小林, and other schools of karate today share or nearly share the sound.

少林流 is one of the two divisions Funakoshi Gichin wrote down in 1922, when he said the various schools, named for their masters, were in fact only two, Shōrei for the heavy-set and large-boned and Shōrin for the small-boned and slight. He wrote it 昭林流 then. In 1924 he wrote it with the temple's characters, 少林流, and suspected the name was short for the Shaolin-temple school; if not, he wrote, the two may be names later men gave from their technique. 空手道 karatedō is the way of the empty hand.

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