♆ Name and Symbol
A bishonen by any other name...The name Cye is thought to have originated as a shorter version of Cyrus. Cye is most commonly said to be of Persian origin. Cye is supposed to mean "sun," which is kind of ironic for the ronin of the water element, but at the same time we can link the sun to the beach and thus the ocean and surfing, which is something Cye has been seen doing. Cyrus has also been associated with meaning "sun" and "lord" as well.
Cye's original Japanese name is Shin. Though some sites claim it means "true," it is often written with the kanji for "extend" and "trust".
There are other kanji that can also be used to represent "Shin," with meanings such as "new," "heart," "belief," "humility," "gentleman," and others. I noticed a pattern that reminded me of the events of the second OVA, Legend of the Inferno Armor, where Cye wanted to move on from all the fighting and live in peace.
Shin's last name is Mōri
, which is often written as Mouri. The first kanji can mean "hair," "fur" or "feathers..." what? Not scales like fish? It can also mean "coarse" or "1/1000." The second kanji means "profit" or "merit."
As it happens with the surnames of other ronin, such as Sanada, Mōri
is also associated with a clan. The MŌri were daimyo or "feudal lords" descendants of Ōe no Hiromoto, a vassal of the Kamakura shogunate. On the left you can see the symbol of the Mōri clan.
The clan lived in the Aki Province (left), which is close to Cye's birthplace of Yamaguchi (right). Yamaguchi was ruled by the Mōri during the Sengoku period, they lost most of their territories there to Tokugawa in 1600, but kept Suō and Nagato, which are a part of today's Yamaguchi. The Mori clan partook in trading by sea and battled the Oda clan's naval forces in several occasions.
Cye's ronin symbol (left) doesn't really look like the Mōri clan's symbol. It instead resembles a yin yang (right) without the dots. The white and black parts of the yin yang represent opposites, such as day and night, light and dark, hot and cold, etc. The two areas are divided by a curve rather than a straight line to show that they yield to each other. The small circles mean that nothing is absolute, in every element there is a little of its opposite. The yin yang represents balance and harmony.
Cye's symbol is almost exactly like a yin yang, but it is missing a key feature, the two circles. It has the opposite forces, the S shape, the "balance," but it doesn't have a bit of one element in its opposite. I see this as representing the purity of each element.
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.