List of The Tale of Genji characters

The characters of The Tale of Genji do not possess birth names. Instead they are assigned sobriquets derived from poetic exchanges (e.g. Murasaki takes her name from a poem by Genji), from the particular court positions they occupy (in the Tyler translation, characters are often referred to by such terms as His Highness of War, Her Majesty the Empress, His Grace, the Palace Minister and so on), from their geographical location (e.g. Lady Akashi who lived on the Akashi coast before meeting Genji), or from the name of their residence (e.g. Lady Rokujō, whose mansion is on the Sixth Avenue, rokujō, or Fujitsubo, literally wisteria pavilion, the part of the Imperial Palace where this particular lady resided). In two out of the three complete translations into English, Seidensticker’s tends to systematically employ the same names (e.g. Genji, Murasaki, Akashi, Utsusemi, etc.), whereas Tyler’s, a more textually accurate translation, tends to change sometimes characters’ appellation with every chapter.

Similarly, many women writers of the Heian period left behind their sobriquets alone. Murasaki Shikibu is no exception: "Murasaki" means "purple" and is likely derived from her character of the same name or her clan background, which used the wisteria as its flower, while “Shikibu” refers to a court position in the Bureau of Ceremonies (shikibu) that her father used to occupy.