First of all, please let me inform you of the meaning of gmenh in "Ramen". Though Japanese are using the same Chinese character to express gmenh as Chinese are, the meanings are a bit different. For Japanese gmenh mean all kind of noodles including rice sticks, soba, etc., whatever the ingredients are as long as they are cereal flour. On the other hand, in Chinese, it means gdoughh made of WHEAT flour only. So in their language, udon and ramen are counted as gmenh but rice sticks and laksa are not. However when it comes to the form, they do not limit its usage only to gstring-likeh stuff, so dumplings are also considered to be a part of gmenh.
You may have noticed some use gLamenh or gLarmenh rather than gRamen.h This is solely because in Japanese language there is no distinction between gLh sound and gRh sound, so it depends his/her favorite which to use. Since the gRh is more popular today to express the sound in alphabet in Japan, gRamenh overpowers gLamenh or gLarmenh.
Now getting back to the origin of the word gRamenh. Frankly speaking, there are several hypotheses but no one can tell which is it. But the following two are the most widely-accepted.
1)In Chinese, hLah in gLamenh means pulling and stretching. So gLamenh means noodles (made of wheat flour) by pulling and stretching. It is believed that when the origin of ramen arrived in Japan, noodles were made by gLamenh way. Then gLamenh, the name of noodle making process, turned gRamenh and became the general name of this noodle dish.
2)Deriving from gLa-, La-g meaning gYes, Yesh in Chinese uttered by an Chinese chef employed by some Ramen shop in Sapporo, the mistress of that shop coined. This is the second one.
FYI, there still is a word gLamenh in Chinese as with the meaning explained and they are using the same character to express gRamenh since there is no other characters equivalent. So in Chinese speaking countries (areas?), like Hong Kong or Taiwan, they usually call hJapanese Lamenh (in Chinese characters) explicitly to distinguish.
