Murasaki refers to both the heroine of the Genji Monogatari

The Tale of Genji

is a classic work of Japanese literature attributed to the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century, around the peak of the Heian period. It is sometimes called the world's first novel, the first modern novel, the first psychological novel or the first novel still to be...

(The Tale of Genji

The Tale of Genji

is a classic work of Japanese literature attributed to the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century, around the peak of the Heian period. It is sometimes called the world's first novel, the first modern novel, the first psychological novel or the first novel still to be...

), and the book's author, Murasaki Shikibu

Murasaki Shikibu

Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court during the Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012...

. Curiously, in both cases the name is a pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

, and the real names are unknown.

In the court manners of the time (the Heian Period

Heian period

The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...

), it was considered unacceptably familiar and vulgar, to freely address people by their personal name, or even by their clan's name. As a result, the real name of the author is lost, and she was called Murasaki Shikibu: Murasaki after the heroine she invented; Shikibu after her father's official rank. The author Murasaki was an aristocrat, the daughter of a provincial governor who probably belonged to a minor branch of the mighty Fujiwara clan. She served as a lady in waiting to the Empress Shoshi

Empress Shōshi

or Empress Shōshi , , also known as , the eldest daughter of Fujiwara no Michinaga, was Empress of Japan from c. 1000 to c. 1011...

 (a daughter of the powerful Fujiwara Michinaga), and was a literary contemporary and rival of Sei Shōnagon

Sei Shonagon

Sei Shōnagon , was a Japanese author and a court lady who served the Empress Teishi around the year 1000 during the middle Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Pillow Book .-Name:...

.

When Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji, she followed the customs of her class and time, so that most of the characters in the novel are never identified by name, but rather by either their rank and title (in the case of male persons), rank and title of their male relatives (in the case of female persons), or after the name of their habitation (in the case of the great court ladies). Thus in the case of Murasaki, the lady in the novel, the author often calls her "The Lady of the West Wing".
This "Lady of the West Wing" is commonly named Murasaki in commentaries and translations. Today, this serves to make the novel more easily comprehensible to those unfamiliar with Heian era court manners and titles, but we know that the author's contemporaries already referred to this character by this name - and nicknamed the author after her.

The name Murasaki is inspired by a poem that the novel's hero, Genji, improvises when contemplating his first meeting with the novel's heroine, the little girl which will grow up to be "Murasaki".

"How glad I would be to pick and soon to make mine that little wild plant sprung up from the very root shared by the murasaki."

(Translation by Royall Tyler in The Tale of Geni by Murasaki Shikibu, translated by Royall Tyler, 2001, ISBN 0 1424.3714 X, p. 100)

is the Japanese word for the color purple

Purple

Purple is a range of hues of color occurring between red and blue, and is classified as a secondary color as the colors are required to create the shade....

. Other translations include Lavender

Lavender (color)

Lavender is a pale tint of violet. It applies particularly to the color of the flower of the same name. The web color called lavender is displayed at right—it matches the color of the very palest part of the lavender flower; however, the more saturated color shown below as floral lavender more...

, as used by Edward Seidensticker

Edward Seidensticker

Edward George Seidensticker was a noted scholar and translator of Japanese literature. He was particularly known for his English version of The Tale of Genji , which is counted among the preferred modern translations...

 in his English version of the Genji Monogatari; Violet

Violet (color)

As the name of a color, violet is synonymous with a bluish purple, when the word "purple" is used in the common English language sense of any color between blue and red, not including either blue or red...

; and Violet Root, which in Japanese poetry

Japanese poetry

Japanese poets first encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang Dynasty. It took them several hundred years to digest the foreign impact, make it a part of their culture and merge it with their literary tradition in their mother tongue, and begin to develop the diversity of their native poetry. For...

 denotes Love and Constancy.

Now Genji, in his poem, names the murasaki or purple gromwell

Lithospermum purpurocaeruleum

Lithospermum purpurocaerula or Purple Gromwell is a herbaceous perennial rhizomatous plant of the genus Lithospermum, belonging to the family Boraginaceae.-Etymology:...

, because its color resembles the color of the wisteria

Wisteria

Wisteria is a genus of flowering plants in the pea family, Fabaceae, that includes ten species of woody climbing vines native to the eastern United States and to China, Korea, and Japan. Aquarists refer to the species Hygrophila difformis, in the family Acanthaceae, as Water Wisteria...

 (in Japanese, fuji) thereby obliquely referring to Fujitsubo

Lady Fujitsubo

Lady Fujitsubo is a fictional character in Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji .Daughter of a previous emperor and thus imperial princess, Fujitsubo enters the service of Kiritsubo Emperor at age 16, mainly because of her resemblance to the deceased Kiritsubo Consort...

, "the Lady of the Wisteria Court", a woman he is violently in love with for the first part of the novel. It happens that this lady Fujitsubo is little Murasaki's aunt.

Thus, in a word association game very characteristic of Japanese poetry, the similarity between two colors - the deep purple of the violet, and the light purple of the wisteria - led to the name Murasaki, perhaps the most illustrious name in Japanese literature.