Iain Abernethy, one of the leading experts on the combat applications of traditinal Okinawan/Japanese kata, has an ingenious analysis here of the mistaken analysis of the meaning of the names pinan/heian in connection with the kata Anko Itosu left as probably his greatest contribution to the karate-based arts, Okinawan, Japanese and Korean. He provides a very cogent argument in this podcast that Itosu, the creator of the Pinan set, intended the characters that are pronounced `Pinan' in Okinawan to be associated with their Chinese, not Japanese meaning; on the former, they translate `safe from harm', a meaning Abernethy finds support for in Gichin Funakoshi's own writings about this kata set. The second part of this podcast is also well worth listening to, but it's the first part, Abernethy's rethinking of the meaning of the characters corresponding to the pronunciation Pinan, that I'm interested in getting discussion started about.