王女戦士 ōjo senshi warrior princess
This is a philological study of the Japanese compound 王女戦士 (ōjo senshi), warrior princess. It is a coinage: two real, old Japanese words set, in the reverse of the English order, for an English phrase a 1995 television series made a title, and it examines why the compound reads correctly to a Japanese eye even though no Japanese source has ever made it.
Abstract
王女戦士, ōjo senshi, is a coinage: two real, old Japanese words, 王女, a king's daughter, and 戦士, a fighting man, set together for the English phrase warrior princess, in the reverse of the English order. No Japanese source has ever made this compound, and the 1995 television series that made the English phrase a title was itself released in Japan under the heroine's name alone. The compound nonetheless reads correctly to a Japanese eye, as a warrior who is a princess, because 戦士 already carries a sense that lets it stand as the head of such a word.
Overview
The sense. A coinage: two dictionary words, a king's daughter and a fighting man, set the other way round from the English phrase; no Japanese source carries the compound. It reads all the same: a Japanese reader parses it on sight as 企業戦士 is parsed, a warrior who is a princess, with 戦士 as the head, which is what the word's second sense already does. It is a coinage, and a clear one.
The words. 王女 is a king's daughter. The 日国's first citation is the 今昔物語集 of about 1120, and it notes the convention that an emperor's daughter is 皇女 and a king's is 王女; the 大辞泉 gives it in three characters, 王の娘, with 王子, prince, as its pair [1]. 戦士 is a man who fights, a soldier on the field, cited from the 平治物語 of about 1220 and the 史記, and it has a second sense the dictionaries date to 島崎藤村 in 1906: one who fights on the front line for a cause, the sense in 企業戦士, corporate warrior [2]. Here 戦士 is the first sense with the second in reach.
The text in English. Warrior princess is an English phrase older than the series, with a history before 1995 that lies outside this article; from 1995 it is the series' subtitle, and the archive's English full text returns tens of thousands of hits, the dated ones among the first hundred all Xena books of 1997 and 1998 [3]. The house's title is the phrase itself. Both languages put the head of such a compound last, and here the two choose different heads: in the English it is princess, a princess who is a warrior; 王女戦士 turns the words round and makes 戦士 the head, a warrior who is a princess. The word-for-word order, 戦士王女, would have kept the English head.
The historical record
1995 to 2001, Xena: Warrior Princess. The series that made the English phrase a title was released in Japan as 『ジーナ』, the heroine's name and nothing more [4].
2018, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. A later series was titled 『シーラとプリンセス戦士』, a katakana princess set before 戦士 in the same order; it is a translated title, not a Japanese word [5].
Today. Nowhere but on this design does the compound stand, on the evidence: it is in no dictionary and in none of the 10,029 books of the local archive [6]. The two halves have their own lives: 王女 is the word for a foreign princess in every newspaper, and 戦士 is the word for a soldier, a cause's fighter, and the corporate warrior of the 1980s. No religious or moral shade attaches to either.
What is not a source. Put together in this order they are not a word Japanese has made for itself. The compound is in no dictionary, in none of the books of the harvest archive [6], and on no Japanese page a web search returns. A Japanese writer wanting the idea says 戦う王女, a princess who fights, or 女戦士, a woman warrior.
A reading
The words are old and real, the order is the reverse of the English, which makes her a warrior first, and the compound reads as a warrior who is a princess to anyone who reads Japanese.
References
- 「王女」・「皇女」, 大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/王女
- 「戦士」, 大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/戦士
- Full-text search, "warrior princess", at the Internet Archive. https://be-api.us.archive.org/fts/v1/search?q=%22warrior+princess%22
- 「ジーナ」, Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ジーナ
- 「シーラとプリンセス戦士」, Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/シーラとプリンセス戦士
- A local mirror of the National Diet Library's digitized prewar books, searched on the compound; the count is held in the research record.