stylistic:tone
Etymology

Originally in Okinawa during the Ryukyu Kingdom period, there existed an indigenous Ryukyuan martial art called te (Okinawan: tī, lit. ' hand '). Furthermore, in the 19th century, a Chinese-derived martial art called tōde (Okinawan: tōdī, lit. ' Tang hand ') emerged. According to Gichin Funakoshi, a distinction between Okinawan-te and tōde existed in the late 19th century. With the emergence of tōde, it is thought that te also came to be called Okinawa-te (Okinawan: Uchinādī, lit. ' Okinawa hand '). However, this distinction gradually became blurred with the decline of Okinawa-te.

Around 1905, when karate began to be taught in public schools in Okinawa, tōde was read kun’yomi and called karate (唐手, lit. ' Tang hand ') in the Japanese style. Both tōde and karate are written in the same Chinese characters meaning "Tang/China hand," but the former is on'yomi (Chinese reading) and the latter is kun'yomi (Japanese reading). Since the distinction between Okinawa-te and tōde was already blurred at that time, karate was used to encompass both. "Kara (から)" is a kun’yomi for the character "唐" (tō/とう in on'yomi) which is derived from " Gaya Confederacy (加羅)" and later included things deriving from China (specifically from the Tang dynasty). Therefore, tōde and karate (Tang hand) differ in the scope of meaning of the words.

Japan sent envoys to the Tang dynasty and introduced much Chinese culture. Gichin Funakoshi proposed that tōde /karate may have been used instead of te, as Tang became a synonym for luxury imported goods.

According to Gichin Funakoshi, the word pronounced karate (から手) existed in the Ryukyu Kingdom period, but it is unclear whether it meant Tang hand (唐手) or empty hand (空手).

The Chinese origins of karate were increasingly viewed with suspicion due to rising tensions between China and Japan and as well as the looming threat of a full-scale war between the two countries. In 1933, the Japanese character for karate was altered to a homophone— a word pronounced identically but with a different meaning. Thus, "Chinese hand" was replaced with "empty hand."

But this name change did not immediately spread among Okinawan karate practitioners. There were many karate practitioners, such as Chōjun Miyagi, who still used te in everyday conversation until World War II.

When karate was first taught in mainland Japan in the 1920s, Gichin Funakoshi and Motobu Chōki used the name karate-jutsu (唐手術, lit. ' Tang hand art ') along with karate. The word jutsu (術) means art or technique, and in those days it was often used as a suffix to the name of each martial art, as in jujutsu and kenjutsu (swordsmanship).

The first documented use of a homophone of the logogram pronounced kara by replacing the Chinese character meaning "Tang dynasty" with the character meaning "empty" took place in Karate Kumite (空手組手) written in August 1905 by Chōmo Hanashiro (1869–1945). In mainland Japan, karate (空手, empty hand) gradually began to be used from the writings of Gichin Funakoshi and Motobu Chōki in the 1920s.

In 1929 the Karate Study Group of Keio University (Instructor Gichin Funakoshi) used this term in reference to the concept of emptiness in the Heart Sutra, and this terminology was later popularized, especially in Tokyo. There is also a theory that the background for this name change was the worsening of Japan-China relations at the time.

On 25 October 1936 a roundtable meeting of karate masters was held in Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, and it was officially resolved to use the name karate (empty hand) in the sense of kūshu kūken (空手空拳, lit. ' without anything in the hands or fists '). To commemorate this day, the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly passed a resolution in 2005 to decide 25 October as "Karate Day."

Another nominal development is the addition of dō (道; どう) to the end of the word karate. Dō is a suffix having numerous meanings including road, path, route and way. It is used in many martial arts that survived Japan's transition from feudal culture to modern times. It implies that these arts are not just fighting systems but contain spiritual elements when promoted as disciplines. In this context dō is usually translated as "the way of …". Examples include aikido, judo, kyūdō and kendo. Thus karatedō is more than just empty hand techniques. It is "the way of the empty hand".

Since the 1980s the term karate (カラテ) has been written in katakana instead of Chinese characters, mainly by Kyokushin Karate (founder: Masutatsu Oyama). In Japan, katakana is mainly used for foreign words, giving Kyokushin Karate a modern and new impression.