Does odoriko mean dancer? As in, someone who dances (nothing more), or does it have any connotations or other meanings I should be aware of? It doesn’t mean like an exotic dancer, or a ballerina, or something does it?
I have a character in an online game (as referenced in another thread in CS) who’s name I intend to change. I was talking with my sister earlier, and she pointed out that I might want to get additional verification that the word means what (and has the connotations) I think it does. The site I usually use to look up word elements & characters (http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/dict) says it is the common term for dancer, and I know there are several Japanese-speaking posters on the board, so I thought I’d double-check here.
The common term for dancer in Japanese is… “dancer”. Pronounced dansaa. A dansaa is someone who practices dansu, a term that encompasses all western dancing forms, from tango to jazz to popping.
For traditional dances both the terms odori and mai are used. Originally, the difference between the two was that mai is performed to music, while in odori, the dancer sets the rhythm without music. However, in popular traditional forms, odori refers to any dance, with or without music.
Odoriko is used to refer to a girl or woman who perferms odori. Maiko is a term used to refer to geisha apprentices, or more generally dancers that entertain recetion guests, depending on the characters.
Odoriko does not have, to my knowledge, any negative connotations. As a matter of fact, the train that connects Tokyo to the Izu peninsula is called Odoriko.
Just adding to the above: I don’t think it’s relevant to the OP’s interests, but ‘-ko’ can also act as a diminutive sometimes. (Actually, as a very random point of interest, I recently read a Japanese version of Huck Finn that translated “nigger” as “kuroko,” literally “small black (thing)”. Apparently this is fairly standard practice when translating books into Japanese, but in context it completely sacked the scene where Huck actually calls Jim “nigger” for the first time.)
It actually makes Odoriko even more appropriate for my character. She’s a short (even for Japanese) young girl who is an expert martial artist, who is the sole heir to a family school of Kempo.
So a term for someone who practices (traditional) forms of dancing, without music, that uses a diminutive suffix (I was already familiar with that via many female names ending in -ko) is particularly apt as a nickname.
Actually, kuroko is the name given to puppet masters in kabuki and bunraku, that are dressed completely in black so as not to draw attention to themselves. It’s used figuratively also to refer to people who act out of view, behind the scenes. I’m a bit surprised that it was used to translate “nigger”. As a matter of fact, I just checked and the translation I found used kurombo. The mbou ending is used to refer to a person based on an attribute. For instance: to behave violently is abareru, from which you get abarembo, a violent person. This is often used lightly or dismissively, which makes kurombo a not so bad translation for “nigger”.
I wouldn’t say it has a negative connotation per se, but it doesn’t usually refer to high-class stage dancers either. To me the word has a homely feel. I think it most commonly refers to folk dancers, the type you see in summer festivals in Japan.
The name of the train is a reference to Izu no Odoriko, a short story by Kawabata Yasunari. The odoriko in the story is a teenage girl, a member of a group of traveling entertainers who perform in hotels. Sort of a low-class version of the Geisha. It’s not clear to me whether such entertainers usually worked as prostitutes as well, but the main character in the story thought so at first. I’m not saying the word has such a connotation today, but then again, most Japanese are familiar with this story.
I couldn’t speak to the relative good or badness of the word, but I don’t imagine that anyone would name their child that. It would strike me about the same as naming your daughter “Minionette” or something.