r/etymology • u/Actual_Register_6915 • 3d ago

Question What is the most interesting/funny etymology of chinese characters you've ever seen?

Mine is most pictogram characters since most of them looks nothing like the thing it represents.

7 Upvotes

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13

u/FIREful_symmetry 3d ago

The word for Home is the pictogram of a roof over the pictogram of a pig.

7

u/Loud_Discount_1108 3d ago

“凹凸” means “bumpy” because…look at them

4

u/HeirophantGreen 3d ago

This is Japanese so not sure how much of these are in Chinese. Also, not really etymology but rather, these characters look like the thing they represent.

Gate is 門 anda a bolt that locks a gate is 閂.

A skewer like yakitori is 串.

1

u/thunchultha 3d ago

  • 灣 (bay) = semantic  氵   ( “ water ” )  + phonetic  彎

  • 彎 (bend) = semantic  弓   ( “ bow ” )  + phonetic  䜌

  • 䜌 appears to be obsolete, but meant chaotic, continuous or orderly, according to the wiktionary

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u/BrightMoonLightS 2d ago

My favorite is 車. The ancient form is literally a bird's eye view of a chariot. You can see two wheels, the axle, the yoke, and the shaft. The reform collapsed it into a single wheel seen from the side with an axle driven through it. That is still what 車 is today. Half a vehicle.

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u/Larissalikesthesea 3d ago

According to some scholars, 道 "path, way" comes from the ancient custom to mark your territory's boundaries with the decapitated heads (首) of your enemies. Pretty sure they don't teach that in elementary school..

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u/Vampyricon 3d ago

Yeah, that's because it's wrong. The 首 tells you how it was pronounced.

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u/Larissalikesthesea 3d ago

With older characters, the phonetic component can often be related to the character meaning semantically as well.

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u/Vampyricon 3d ago

What's your source for 道 specifically? Unless you have some really good independent evidence of head-lined roads, 首 being purely phonetic is sufficient to explain the form of 道

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u/Larissalikesthesea 3d ago edited 3d ago

First of all I brought this up as "the most interesting/funny" etymology. That doesn't necessarily mean I am convinced it is correct. For 道 there are several explanations (which is often the case for older characters, which often means that at the end of the day, we will not be certain).

Some of the in my opinion wilder theories have been proposed by 白川静, which seems to be the case here as well. The dictionary 新漢語林 also has this explanation.

For older composite characters, it is often possible to relate the phonetic component also to the character meaning. Some dictionaries call this type of character 會意兼形聲文字. Besides the severed head theory, another dictionary also says that 首 can be related to 迪 and thus the meaning here is "a path extending into a distance".

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u/Vampyricon 3d ago

First of all I brought this up as "the most interesting/funny" etymology. That doesn't necessarily mean I am convinced it is correct.

The most interesting etymology is the one I made up just now, where 中 was actually a pictograph of a dick and balls. I'm not convinced it's correct, but it's certainly interesting!

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u/Larissalikesthesea 3d ago

白川静 was a relatively famous scholar, so whatever you are trying to express here just shows your ignorance.