ゴルファー gorufā Golfer
Abstract
ゴルファー, gorufā, golfer, is the English word written in katakana. The national dictionary first cites it from a novel of 1930; a 1925 dictionary of modern words born from English already has it, and from 1929 the essay collections of Shimomura Kainan carry it book after book.
Overview
The sense. A person who plays golf. The word is a katakana loanword.
The words. ゴルファー gorufā: デジタル大辞泉 ゴルフをする人, a person who plays golf; 精選版日本国語大辞典 the same, from English golfer, first cited from Hosoda Tamiki's novel 真理の春 of 1930, 眼の下のゴルフ・リンクに、ゴルファの自動車を運ぶ道, the road that carries the golfers' cars to the links below [1].
The text in English. Golfer and ゴルファー are one word in two scripts.
The historical record
1925. Before the dictionary's date. A dictionary of modern words born from English, compiled by the Osaka Mainichi's English-study staff, has the entry ゴルファー(Golfer)ゴルフ戯をする人, a person who plays the game of golf, in 1925, five years before the citation the national dictionary gives [2][1]. It is the oldest book the full-text search lists with the word [3].
1929 to 1939. Shimomura Kainan. In 1929 Shimomura Kainan can joke that ゴルファーは馬鹿に早起をする, golfers get up absurdly early, and that 親爺のゴルフには年中休暇がない, father's golf has no holidays all year [4]; nine of the 29 books the full-text search lists with the word, of the 50 it counts, are his essay collections of 1929 to 1939 [3].
What is not a source. The English is the source, and in Japanese the word has no author.
Today. What a rendering keeps is the katakana, which marks the word as the English one.
A reading
ゴルファー is what it looks like, the English word carried in katakana, and in the books the full-text search lists its print life begins five years before the national dictionary's date, in a dictionary of words born from English, and runs through a decade of one essayist's jokes about early risers.
References
- 「ゴルファー」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/ゴルファー
- 英文大阪毎日学習号編輯局編, 『英語から生れた現代語の辭典』, 大阪出版社, 1925, scan 281. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1900269/1/281
- National Diet Library next-generation full-text search on ゴルファー, searched again 26 September 2026: 50 books counted, 29 listed, dated 1925 to 1965; nine of the 29 are 下村海南's, 1929 to 1939. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/book/search?searchfield=contentonly&keyword=ゴルファー
- 下村海南, 『鯖を讀む話』, 日本評論社, 1929, scan 144. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1881586/1/144