What does“Ksitiputra” mean?

Some people always ask me, what does your name “Ksitiputra” mean? How do we pronounce it? Let me explain a little bit.

My name is actually a Sanskrit word (Sanskrit is a sacred language used by Buddhist and Hindu), and its pronunciation should sound something like “Shi-ti-pu-tra”, the “K” sound is mute, while there should be a little dot under “s” to make it pronounce somewhat like “sh”, one should roll his/her tongue while pronouncing “ra”. Similar to its Portuguese or Spanish counterpart. Anyway, why did I choose it as my name? The story goes like this…

When I just started learning Buddhism, I very enjoyed reading a Buddhist sutra (text) called “Sutra of the Past Vows of Earth Store Bodhisattva”. I deeply admire the character Earth Store Bodhisattva who vows to liberate beings that suffer in hells forever, if hell doesn’t extinguish, he would never attain Buddhahood. He doesn’t enjoy staying in heavenly places but stay with beings that dwell in misery places where he could liberate and bear their suffer and pain. This is such a great vow and is also rare among Bodhisattvas (those who practice the path to Buddhahood).



The transliteral name of “Earth Store Bodhisattva” in Sanskrit is “Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva” - “Ksiti” means “earth” and “garbha” stands for “store”, “bodhi” means “enlightenment” whilst “sattva” stands for “being”.

Since I adore this Bodhisattva a lot, so I use “Ksiti” as the prefix of my name and added “putra” as its suffix, the word “putra” means “son of”, hence literally my name means “Son of the Earth”. My intention is to be the son of Earth Store Bodhisattva and follow his vows. Initially I used Ksitigarbha-putra as my name, but this is too long and therefore I shrank it to “Ksitiputra”.

This is also the reason why my icon is always a little lovely buddha statue; it is actually a Japanese version of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva called “Jizo-sama” (地藏).

Namo Amituofo!