Thread:Old McDonald/@comment-24259054-20140809184258/@comment-24494906-20140809191710

Hm... It's really difficult. The problem is that "子" has many meanings. "Child" is the meaning of the character, but it can be used for different purposes. For example, as a suffix it can turn the word into a noun, then it means "thing" (potentially with the connotation "small", but it doesn't need to be so). So for example "振子" means "an object that swings" or a pendulum. Or you could also interpret "子" as "offshoot".

What makes that whole situation even weirder is that Ishida went for a rare reading of the character. The reading he went with is "ne", but this character is typically read as "ko", "go" or "shi".

I can't really judge what is the meaning Ishida intended. But imho, "child" is strange.