Can へ mean "and"? In Chinese 和 means "and" and is read "he", so I'm just
hopeful... I don't mean in the present necessarily, just at any point in the
language's history. I know へ is used as a direction marker... just wondering
if there was another use.
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2013-12-11T03:02:32.223
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particles archaic-language
Can へ mean "and"?
No, it can't.

へ as a particle in Japanese maintains the meaning of direction and is
unrelated to any meaning of "and." Furthermore, the pronunciation of "he" i
Chinese is quite different from the pronunciation of へ in Japanese, so even
that much is a but of a stretch. They're alike in romanization only. This is
even more irrelevant because when Japanese uses the character 和 with its
Chinese-derived pronunciation, it becomes "wa."

和 in Japanese refers to peace/harmony, like in 平和, or to Japan itself as in
大和{やまと} or 和風{わふう}.
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2013-12-11T03:12:06.613
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Absolutely not. 和 doesn't even mean "and" in Chinese generally – only in
Mandarin. Moreover the on-yomi for 和 are わ and か, as expected – at the time
Chinese words were borrowed, the /h/ phoneme was pronounced with the lips
(most likely [p] or [ɸ]).

The etymology of the particle へ itself is well-understood: it derives from a
(now extinct) noun meaning something like "neighbourhood" or "surroundings".
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