As some know, うち is another way to say "I" in Japanese, my tutor (and others)
saying it's mostly used by younger women. My question is...how did this come
to be? Because, I can't help but notice the exact pronunciation of this word
and another common Japanese word: 家.

Did 家 (house) come first or うち (I) come first? If the former, does うち being
used for "I" come from 家? If so, how did that come to be? And how did this
come to be a way of saying "I" primarily by women or in other regional
dialect?

I ask because I remember some time ago my tutor (when telling me what うち; "I"
meant) said that うち and 家 are related and that the former's use for meaning
"I" came after/was because of what 家 meant. But I forgot his explanation, so I
wanted to ask here.
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etymology pronouns first-person-pronouns
What's the Etymology for using うち to mean "I"?
## The word _uchi_

This has multiple possible spellings. Uncommon / rare spellings marked with a
†:

  * 打ち -- "hitting, striking"
  * 宇智 -- name of a former county in Nara prefecture
  * 有知†, 有智† -- knowledgeability; a knowledgeable person
  * 内, 中† -- "inside, interior"
  * 家 -- "home; the inside of a building"
  * 裡† -- "the duration of a certain state"

The top three aren't relevant here, and don't appear to be related
derivationally, so let's ignore those for the rest of this post.

## Sense Development

According to the [entry](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%86%85-440222) in the big
_Kokugo Dai Jiten_ (KDJ; a bit like the Oxford English Dictionary only for
Japanese), the sense of "inside, interior" is apparently attestable all the
way back to 720 in the [_Nihon
Shoki_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihon_Shoki). See definition [1]-②. The
core meaning appears to be "interior", but specifically "of an enclosed (or
enclose-able) space".

Not long after, in the
[_Man'yōshū_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27y%C5%8Dsh%C5%AB) poetry
collection completed around 759, we see _uchi_ used to mean "house, home,
residence; place of business", as an extension of the "interior (of a
building)" sense. See definition [1]-⑩-(ロ).

Much later in 1563, the word is attested meaning "my home, my house". See
definition [1]-⑩-(イ).

Three and a half centuries after that in 1916, we see citations of _uchi_ used
to mean "I, me, myself", presumably as an extension of the "my home" sense.
See definition [2]. The entry describes this usage as primarily feminine and
primarily Kansai.

**Summary**

So in essence, the meanings developed historically in order as:

  * "inside, interior"
  * "house"
  * "my home"
  * "I, me, myself"
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