64902
I dabble in Shodo and I am designing a calligraphy to give as a gif to a
martial arts master.

He is French, and his name is Pierre (Pierre, just like all other derivatives
of Latin "Petrus", like Peter, Pietro, Pedro, Piotr... all come from a root
word meaning Stone... in fact in French Pierre translates to Peter as a
personal name, and to "stone" when used as a word for a thing).

So I wanted to write a Kanji combination to express the concept of Stone
Master, and I come up with:  
  
     **石  
    主**   
  

**My question:** what would the effect on someone who is fluent in Japanese?

I understand this is not a common word, but I just want to be sure that it is
not demeaning/funny/inappropriate (I expect him to hang it in his dojo where
it will be also seen by some Japanese person in the future).

I also appreciate any suggestion about something that is - in your opinion -
better/more appropriate/more "honorific" for the same concept, as long as, if
possible, it is written in Kanji only, which works better for me when doing
Shodo.

* * *

Further remarks:

According to [this](https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%9F%B3%E4%B8%BB) (but take
in account that I had to use Google Translator because I do not know Chinese
at all) "石主" in Chinese it is some sort of mythical figure.

**Final (?) note**

Thanks everybody, in the end I went for a [different idea](https://www.pa-
mar.net/Study/ShoDo/Accidentally%20Good/TheFastestStone.html) altogether
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-15T10:50:52.570
64899
2019-01-20T21:40:02.813
2019-01-20T21:40:02.813
1646
1646
question
translation kanji-choice calligraphy
How to express "Stone Master" as a compliment
The kanji 主 means "master (of a slave)", "master (of a pet)", "owner",
"governor", etc., but it does _not_ mean he is an expert of something. If you
simply want to say "grand master (of martial art)", let's use [師範
(shihan)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shihan), which is a simple and nice
term for that concept. It can be used also as an honorific name suffix, just
like "sensei".

So we get 石師範, which sounds like "(Grand) Master Stone" or "Stone-sensei" to
me. This is still confusing and actually a little funny because almost no
Japanese people can associate "Pierre" with "stone", but there is nothing we
can do for that. If you are willing to explain that part, it should pass as a
meaningful wordplay. Someone who is fluent both in Japanese and French should
notice the intention.

石戦士 does sound like "Stone Fighter", and I imagine something like "a golem
with a sword" :)
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-15T13:57:45.753
64902
2019-01-15T13:57:45.753
5010
64899
answer
Depending on the particular martial art, 師傅 or 師父 could be appropriate. These
are the kanji / hanzi spellings of the common title _shifu_ used to refer to
one's martial arts instructor in Chinese ([related Wikipedia
page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifu)). The second spelling has overtones
of fatherliness as well, if that's a sense you'd like to add (or avoid).
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-18T18:20:02.353
64963
2019-01-18T18:20:02.353
5229
64899
answer