An aji, anji, or azu was a ruler of a petty kingdom in the history of the Ryukyu Islands. The word later became a title and rank of nobility

Nobility

Nobility is a social class which possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence than members of most other classes in a society, membership therein typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles, or may be...

 in the Ryūkyū Kingdom

Ryukyu Kingdom

The Ryūkyū Kingdom was an independent kingdom which ruled most of the Ryukyu Islands from the 15th century to the 19th century. The Kings of Ryūkyū unified Okinawa Island and extended the kingdom to the Amami Islands in modern-day Kagoshima Prefecture, and the Sakishima Islands near Taiwan...

. It is said to be related to the Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 aruji ("master"), and the pronunciation varied throughout the islands. It ranked next below a prince

Prince

Prince is a general term for a ruler, monarch or member of a monarch's or former monarch's family, and is a hereditary title in the nobility of some European states. The feminine equivalent is a princess...

 among nobility. The sons of princes and the eldest sons of anji became aji. An aji established a noble family equivalent to a miyake of Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

.

The aji arose around the twelfth century as local leaders began to build gusuku

Gusuku

, or just , is the term used for the distinctive Okinawan form of castles or fortresses. In standard Japanese, the same kanji is pronounced "shiro", but the word is probably cognate with a different Japanese word, "soko" , which means "fortress"...

(castles in the Ryūkyū style). Shō Hashi

Sho Hashi

Shō Hashi was the first king of the Ryūkyū Kingdom , uniting the three kingdoms of Chūzan, Hokuzan, and Nanzan by conquest...

 was an aji who later unified the Ryūkyūs as king. The title aji variously designated sons of the king and regional leaders. During the Second Shō Dynasty, when the aji settled near Shuri Castle

Shuri Castle

Shuri Castle is a gusuku in Shuri, Okinawa. It was the palace of the Ryūkyū Kingdom. In 1945, during the Battle of Okinawa, it was almost completely destroyed...

, the word came to denote an aristocrat in the castle town.

A pattern for addressing a male aji began with the place he ruled and ended with the word aji, for example, "Nago Aji." For women, the suffix ganashi or kanashi (加那志) followed: "Nago Aji-ganashi."