Is there a Japanese word for money/wealth that sounds like 'tuh ki'?


About 30 years ago, when meeting the famous George Takei, my friend
accidentally pronounced his last name as 'Tuh ki' (rhymes with 'hi'). As an 11
year old, he had never really heard George's name pronounced out loud, so this
was his best guess. George corrected him and said that the way my friend
mispronounced it was actually the word for 'Money' or 'wealth'. He joked that
he didn't mind the mispronunciation because it was almost a compliment! What
is the word that my friend accidentally used?

Edit: I originally wrote 'Tuh kay', which is actually the correct
pronunciation of the second syllable... oops.




Going by your phonetic transcription:

  * the vowel in "Tuh" actually doesn't exist in Japanese, so it'd be hard to mishear it as another word Japanese word, it'd just sound like a very American pronunciation of the Japanese "ta", so it shouldn't cause an issue.
  * "Kay" (rhyming with "Hey") is actually fairly close to the right pronunciation of "kei", it just sounds a bit American, but not like a different Japanese word.

So, from the information you've provided, I see no reason the pronunciation
could sound like a different Japanese word.

The closest Japanese word which means 'money' that I can think of is お金 ("o
kane", recordings available
[here](https://ja.forvo.com/word/%E3%81%8A%E9%87%91/#ja)), but that's pretty
different -- it doesn't have a 't', it has an 'n', and the final vowel is
shorter, so your friend would have really need to have butchered the name for
it to sound like that.

(Another related word might be 高値
([takane](https://ja.forvo.com/word/%E9%AB%98%E5%80%A4/#ja)), but that doesn't
mean 'money', it means 'high price'. And still, it has the 'n' in it.)

**EDIT:** Okay, based on your edit, "ki" (rhyming with "hi") _would_ result in
a different Japanese word: 高い
([takai](https://ja.forvo.com/word/%E9%AB%98%E3%81%84/#ja)). This doesn't mean
"money", it's a very common word which means "high" or "tall", though by
extension is often used to mean "expensive". Maybe this is what your friend
said?

