Carr cites the historical precedence of construing Wa as "submissive people" and the "Country of Dwarfs" legend as evidence that the "little people" etymology was a secondary development. Since early Chinese information about Wo/Wa peoples was based largely on hearsay, Wang Zhenping (2005:9) says, "Little is certain about the Wo except they were obedient and complaisant." The Japanese endonym Wa 倭 "Japan" derives from the Chinese exonym Wō 倭 "Japan, Japanese", a graphic pejorative Chinese character that had some offensive connotation, possibly "submissive, docile, obedient", "bowing; bent over", or "short person; dwarf" in modern times. 倭 and 和 characters The Chinese character 倭 combines the 人 or 亻 "human, person" radical and a wěi 委 "bend" phonetic. This wěi phonetic element depicts hé 禾 "grain" over nǚ 女 "woman", which Bernhard Karlgren (1923:368) semantically analyzes as: "bend down, bent, tortuous, crooked; fall down, throw down, throw away, send away, reject; send out, delegate – to bend like a 女 woman working with the 禾 grain." The oldest written forms of 倭 are in Seal script, and it has not been identified in Bronzeware script or Oracle bone script. Most characters written with this wěi 委 phonetic are pronounced wei in Standard Chinese:wèi 魏 ("ghost" radical) "the state of Wei"wēi 逶 ("motion" radical) "serpentine; winding, curving" [in wēiyí 逶迤 "winding (road, river)"]wěi 萎 ("plant" radical) "wilt; wither; atrophy; tire, grow weary; (metaphorically) decline, fade"wěi 痿 ("sickness" radical) "paralysis; impotence"wěi 諉 ("speech" radical) "shirk; shift blame (onto others)"wèi 餧 ("food" radical) "feed (animals)" The unusual Wō 倭 "Japan" pronunciation of the wěi 委 phonetic element is also present in:wō 踒 ("foot" radical) "strain; sprain (sinew or muscle)"wǒ 婑 ("woman" radical) "beautiful" [in wǒtuǒ 婑媠 "beautiful; pretty"] (In this word's case, the phonemic segments are identical, but the tonemes differ.) A third pronunciation is found in the reading of the following character:ǎi 矮 ("arrow" radical) "dwarf, short of stature; low; inferior" Nara period Japanese scholars believed that Chinese character for Wō 倭 "Japan", which they used to write "Wa" or "Yamato", was graphically pejorative in denoting 委 "bent down" 亻 "people". Around 757 CE, Japan officially changed its endonym from Wa 倭 to Wa 和 "harmony; peace; sum; total". This replacement Chinese character hé 和 combines a hé 禾 "grain" phonetic (also seen in 倭) and the "mouth" radical 口. Carr explains: Graphic replacement of the 倭 "dwarf Japanese" Chinese logograph became inevitable.