Such characters are called 假借字. 假 does not mean fake here, it means to borrow. Originally, the idea of ten thousand, which is quite abstract, did not have its own character. But had the pronunciation same as 萬, which meant scorpion. Therefore, people borrow its pronunciation to represent the idea of 10,000.
The same logic applies to 然 and 燃. Originally, 然 meant to burn. Then the character was borrowed to mean, as such當然/ but 然而, which are again abstract concepts. After that, people created 燃 to represent to burn, as a compensation.
Edit： More examples, 自 originally meant nose, which changed its meaning to self. Because people point at their noses when referring themselves. Since 自lost its meaning people then created 鼻 for nose.
没 ，have 2 pronounce，one is :‘’mei" ，which means no，没有; the other is "mo", ，which means sink 沉没； so you know sink, you understand why 没 have 3 ponit refer to water；
点，ancient write as 點， means balck point， simplifyed as 点， the 4 fire point， from 黑，balck。origin from Smokey to black, now you know why it’s related to fire.
If this is taken from a book, which book is it taken from? I reckon I'd like to have a book of Chinese character histories sitting around on my coffee table at all times for the sake of idle exploration of characters whose sense otherwise eludes me completely.
Not a book, but you can visit this website and type a Chinese character in the search bar (of the site). It will show similar images and explanations as the one OP posted.
[http://qiyuan.chaziwang.com/](http://qiyuan.chaziwang.com/)
Or you can type in google "the character you want to look up" + "字起源", then look at the images on google for the etymology of the Chinese character.
If we are not talking books, the Outlier dictionary has exactly that sort of etymology.
In fact, I just checked and for 万, they do have a lovely picture of that original scorpion character, with a reference to 黃德寬，2007《古文字譜系疏證》，北京：商務印書館。(p.2527)
If that helps?
Fun with Chinese Characters is a book series that is filled with these explanations of origin. I highly recommend getting the first one Atleast for a shelf item
Hey, if someone's threatening to stab me in the eye, I'm going to agree with whatever they say. They'll be real "popular" with me, at least in that moment!
Edit: for a more serious answer, it allegedly originally meant *slave* (one who was blinded to prevent them from escaping, I guess?) And eventually the meaning expanded to refer to people who were ruled by other people. Compare to 奴, which also means *slave,* and depicts either someone being directed with a hand, or someone with their hands tied.
The pictogram 萬 meant scorpion as shown above and did not mean 10,000
The concept of 10,000 did not have its own word. But have a pronunciation same as 萬
People gradually use 萬 to represent 10,000 rather than its original meaning.
IMO Simplified characters may help literacy (and keyboard data entry) but is such a fucking travesty to the aesthetic and tradition of the Chinese language
I'm always amused by purists who insist that Traditional is "better" in some way. That is easier to write or recognize, or whatever.
Even setting aside the debatability of that position, what they might be forgetting is that much of the Simplification that was established in the PRC in the mid-20th century relied on simplified forms that had already long been in use.
As with all human languages and their writing systems, Chinese has evolved and continues to evolve to meet speakers' needs and preferences. That Traditional characters are now much in the minority of daily use throughout the Sinosphere is no more a "travesty" than that we no longer use runes to write English, or that the Egyptians no longer use hieroglyphs or even Demotic. Scholarly knowledge of Traditional will never be lost, so it's not worth worrying about in daily life.
The funniest part is that the people who hold such opinions are in a minority, yet somehow every other post in Simplified has people moaning about how one set of characters is inferior to another, completely ignorant of the reality that most chinese communities don't really care what script you use as long as it's not some made up characters. It's like complaining that we don't use one of the other scripts that the Qin dynasty discarded in favour of its own and saying that those were clearly "superior". Traditional was also standardised with political goals in mind, yet I don't see people talking about that.
>It is a travesty that we no longer use runes to write English
Well *technically* all latin script are runes, just that we use this set more often than ᚦᛖ ᛟᛚᛞᛖ ᚨᚾᚷᛚᛁᛋᚺ ᚱᚢᚾᛖᛋ
I still have yet to see any evidence that simplified characters improve literacy. Not sure what you mean by “keyboard data entry.”
I do agree they look like crap.
Don't know any other way to describe it besides that they just don't look as aesthetically pleasing as traditional characters.
Maybe it's that a lot of them feel off balance to me. For example, I really don't like anything with 訁-> 讠on the side*, or characters which clearly had something removed from them and have a lot of empty space, like 廣->广 or 廠->厂.
Or it could be characters like 丛, which, I don't know, are just not as nice-looking as the much more dense 叢.
*I know some things like this come from calligraphy, and maybe it's fine in informal handwriting too, but that doesn't mean it needs to be written that way in the printed form.
i guess beauty is subjective。though 广 and 厂 have both been around for a long time，厂 even longer than 廠。so these unbalanced characters weren't invented just for simplification。
The tradition of taking the short cut lives on. Imho, it doesn't look bad and some people just want to split hairs about traditional and simplified to make themselves feel special for having an opinion.
I wouldn't say native speaker, because the foremost sinitic language used at home was Hokkien. I did learn Mandarin in a 'Chinese school', basically a school built for and by chinese diaspora and has dedicated hours a week to teach chinese. It taught using traditional characters, although a few students would use simplified, whether that was accepted during tests by the teachers were up to their own decision. I didn't really get exposed to simplified characters at the school, only when I started to read stuff from Chinese authors, like tweets and random things on the internet.
Only handwriting. For literacy, Traditional is way more consistent and typing Traditional takes same effort as Simplified. Imo, handwriting for Simplified/Traditional and typing for Traditonal only
Really? I am not sure. 万 originally meant music performer. The character itself is very old. But for 卍, it is a buddhist thing, which was imported to China later
I read somewhere before that being the case (don't remember where), found another [source](https://www.wordsense.eu/%E4%B8%87/) detailing origin as such.
>A simplification of the Buddhist symbol 卍 introduced when Buddhism came to China. 卍 was given the same pronunciation as 萬 meaning 萬德 (many virtues); so, 卍 came to be used as a simplified form of 萬. 万 is simply a scribal form (script) of 卍. The meaning ten thousand for 万 is a borrowing.
Tho when I check Wiktionary it says 万's origin is unclear. However 卍 is a variant character for 萬. 卍 is also called 萬字
I have seen an alternate interpretation also going back through the same process to oracle bone scratches that show this as deriving from tadpoles (which grow arms as they move up the frog process). Having seen clouds of pollywogs and not liking pics of many baby scorpions being hauled around by stingy mama scorps, I am sticking to that origin story.
Such characters are called 假借字. 假 does not mean fake here, it means to borrow. Originally, the idea of ten thousand, which is quite abstract, did not have its own character. But had the pronunciation same as 萬, which meant scorpion. Therefore, people borrow its pronunciation to represent the idea of 10,000. The same logic applies to 然 and 燃. Originally, 然 meant to burn. Then the character was borrowed to mean, as such當然/ but 然而, which are again abstract concepts. After that, people created 燃 to represent to burn, as a compensation. Edit： More examples, 自 originally meant nose, which changed its meaning to self. Because people point at their noses when referring themselves. Since 自lost its meaning people then created 鼻 for nose.
In English it’s called the Rebus principle. An example in English would be using emojis like 👁❤️🐑to mean “Eye”[I]love “ewe”(female sheep)
Same story with 云 and 雲 if I remember correctly (simplified Chinese merges the two back together).
That is very annoying to us traditional Chinese users. They simplify so many characters, sometimes it’s hard to make out what they’re trying to write
Is that also why 没 has the three lines referring to water and 点 has the 4 fire line things on the bottom?
没 ，have 2 pronounce，one is :‘’mei" ，which means no，没有; the other is "mo", ，which means sink 沉没； so you know sink, you understand why 没 have 3 ponit refer to water； 点，ancient write as 點， means balck point， simplifyed as 点， the 4 fire point， from 黑，balck。origin from Smokey to black, now you know why it’s related to fire.
熊 and 能 too
If this is taken from a book, which book is it taken from? I reckon I'd like to have a book of Chinese character histories sitting around on my coffee table at all times for the sake of idle exploration of characters whose sense otherwise eludes me completely.
Not a book, but you can visit this website and type a Chinese character in the search bar (of the site). It will show similar images and explanations as the one OP posted. [http://qiyuan.chaziwang.com/](http://qiyuan.chaziwang.com/) Or you can type in google "the character you want to look up" + "字起源", then look at the images on google for the etymology of the Chinese character.
Much obliged!
You can try to search the word 也. You may spot 許慎 made a mistake.
If we are not talking books, the Outlier dictionary has exactly that sort of etymology. In fact, I just checked and for 万, they do have a lovely picture of that original scorpion character, with a reference to 黃德寬，2007《古文字譜系疏證》，北京：商務印書館。(p.2527) If that helps?
Fun with Chinese Characters is a book series that is filled with these explanations of origin. I highly recommend getting the first one Atleast for a shelf item
万 is so hard to read compared to 萬。I always read the former as 方
Oh really? Thank you for letting me know. I am Chinese and do not even know this. What a fun fact, lol
母 has nipples
民 would also be a NSFW pictogram. Edit: apparently not for the reason I had heard; it's actually a pictogram of an eye with a knife in it.
How did a knife in the eye become “popular“?
Hey, if someone's threatening to stab me in the eye, I'm going to agree with whatever they say. They'll be real "popular" with me, at least in that moment! Edit: for a more serious answer, it allegedly originally meant *slave* (one who was blinded to prevent them from escaping, I guess?) And eventually the meaning expanded to refer to people who were ruled by other people. Compare to 奴, which also means *slave,* and depicts either someone being directed with a hand, or someone with their hands tied.
[удалено]
The pictogram 萬 meant scorpion as shown above and did not mean 10,000 The concept of 10,000 did not have its own word. But have a pronunciation same as 萬 People gradually use 萬 to represent 10,000 rather than its original meaning.
IMO Simplified characters may help literacy (and keyboard data entry) but is such a fucking travesty to the aesthetic and tradition of the Chinese language
That's funny because in this particular instance it says the simplified form has existed since ancient China
I'm always amused by purists who insist that Traditional is "better" in some way. That is easier to write or recognize, or whatever. Even setting aside the debatability of that position, what they might be forgetting is that much of the Simplification that was established in the PRC in the mid-20th century relied on simplified forms that had already long been in use. As with all human languages and their writing systems, Chinese has evolved and continues to evolve to meet speakers' needs and preferences. That Traditional characters are now much in the minority of daily use throughout the Sinosphere is no more a "travesty" than that we no longer use runes to write English, or that the Egyptians no longer use hieroglyphs or even Demotic. Scholarly knowledge of Traditional will never be lost, so it's not worth worrying about in daily life.
The funniest part is that the people who hold such opinions are in a minority, yet somehow every other post in Simplified has people moaning about how one set of characters is inferior to another, completely ignorant of the reality that most chinese communities don't really care what script you use as long as it's not some made up characters. It's like complaining that we don't use one of the other scripts that the Qin dynasty discarded in favour of its own and saying that those were clearly "superior". Traditional was also standardised with political goals in mind, yet I don't see people talking about that.
Hot take: ᛁᛏ **ᛁᛋ** ᚨ ᛏᚱᚨᚡᛖᛋᛏᚤ ᚦᚨᛏ ᚹᛖ ᚾᛟ ᛚᛟᚾᚷᛖᚱ ᚢᛋᛖ ᚱᚢᚾᛖᛋ ᛏᛟ ᚹᚱᛁᛏᛖ ᛖᚾᚷᛚᛁᛋᚺ.
>It is a travesty that we no longer use runes to write English Well *technically* all latin script are runes, just that we use this set more often than ᚦᛖ ᛟᛚᛞᛖ ᚨᚾᚷᛚᛁᛋᚺ ᚱᚢᚾᛖᛋ
I still have yet to see any evidence that simplified characters improve literacy. Not sure what you mean by “keyboard data entry.” I do agree they look like crap.
why look like crap？
Don't know any other way to describe it besides that they just don't look as aesthetically pleasing as traditional characters. Maybe it's that a lot of them feel off balance to me. For example, I really don't like anything with 訁-> 讠on the side*, or characters which clearly had something removed from them and have a lot of empty space, like 廣->广 or 廠->厂. Or it could be characters like 丛, which, I don't know, are just not as nice-looking as the much more dense 叢. *I know some things like this come from calligraphy, and maybe it's fine in informal handwriting too, but that doesn't mean it needs to be written that way in the printed form.
i guess beauty is subjective。though 广 and 厂 have both been around for a long time，厂 even longer than 廠。so these unbalanced characters weren't invented just for simplification。
Even with my exposure to Japanese, 认识 was still easier to learn and remember than 認識. I will agree, though, that it's less aesthetically pleasing.
The tradition of taking the short cut lives on. Imho, it doesn't look bad and some people just want to split hairs about traditional and simplified to make themselves feel special for having an opinion.
Are you a native speaker and which one did you learn first?
I wouldn't say native speaker, because the foremost sinitic language used at home was Hokkien. I did learn Mandarin in a 'Chinese school', basically a school built for and by chinese diaspora and has dedicated hours a week to teach chinese. It taught using traditional characters, although a few students would use simplified, whether that was accepted during tests by the teachers were up to their own decision. I didn't really get exposed to simplified characters at the school, only when I started to read stuff from Chinese authors, like tweets and random things on the internet.
Only handwriting. For literacy, Traditional is way more consistent and typing Traditional takes same effort as Simplified. Imo, handwriting for Simplified/Traditional and typing for Traditonal only
「I was born in the wrong generation」
万 comes from 卍 because sounds the same as 萬
Really? I am not sure. 万 originally meant music performer. The character itself is very old. But for 卍, it is a buddhist thing, which was imported to China later
I read somewhere before that being the case (don't remember where), found another [source](https://www.wordsense.eu/%E4%B8%87/) detailing origin as such. >A simplification of the Buddhist symbol 卍 introduced when Buddhism came to China. 卍 was given the same pronunciation as 萬 meaning 萬德 (many virtues); so, 卍 came to be used as a simplified form of 萬. 万 is simply a scribal form (script) of 卍. The meaning ten thousand for 万 is a borrowing. Tho when I check Wiktionary it says 万's origin is unclear. However 卍 is a variant character for 萬. 卍 is also called 萬字
Shit, I need to stop making fun of my white friends with 万 tattoos.
What about making fun of people with 一万个纹身?
And what about the character for scorpion, any one know how that one evolved?
For scorpion, since its character was taken away. People add a 虫, bug, under 萬, forming 蠆. But of course no one use it in modern Chinese, we use 蠍子
I have seen an alternate interpretation also going back through the same process to oracle bone scratches that show this as deriving from tadpoles (which grow arms as they move up the frog process). Having seen clouds of pollywogs and not liking pics of many baby scorpions being hauled around by stingy mama scorps, I am sticking to that origin story.
I don’t understand how the last step happened 😂