What did 才六 and similar terms about Kansai residents mean?


While looking up the denonym for a Kansai resident (I've since found out it's
関西人{かんさいじん}), jisho.org described 才六, 贅六, 上方才六, 賽六 and 采六, with pronunciations
(not necessarily in that order) of ぜいろく, ぜえろく, かみがたざいろく, and さいろく as being
(presumably related) words used to debase people from Kansai.

What did these words mean?




> What did these words mean?

才六, 贅六, 賽六 and 采六 are all the same word written in various kanji. There are
several pronunciations:

  * sairoku: most basic and original.
  * zeiroku: Derives from above sairoku. This is how an easterner would pronounce the word. ai > eː is a common phonological change in eastern Japanese. Likely pronounced as zeːroku (zeeroku) rather than zeiroku. Voiced sounds, especially word initial, often have a negative sense to it, which is likely the explanation for s > z.
  * zeeroku: Same as above, but this time spelling ai > eː as ee instead of ei.

The word kamigata (上方) is the area around Kyōto. cf Kinki and Kansai. While
sairoku etc generally already refer to people from the western part of Japan,
this specifies the region.

As for the meaning, originally sairoku meant a young person. (Similar to
aonisai 青二才). When not applied to a child, this may be insulting and is how
the term came to be used as an insult.

Just speculating but I wonder if 才六 is just an inversion of 六才 "six years
old". There are other slang words like this such as biichiku < chikubi (乳首)
and jingai (人外 < 外人).

