Character etymology for 日 (rì,sun; day)
mandarinboy
September 25, 2008, 08:43 PM posted in General DiscussionWe have before mentioned that most characters are build up from smaller parts, radicals. Today I meant to write about a more complex and highly frequent character but to be able to do that I first need to start with the parts that the character is build from. I start with 日.
Character: 日
Traditional form: 日
Pinyin: rì
Meaning: sun,day
Frequency: 67
Strokes: 4
Decomposition: 日
Radical part: 日
Alternative forms of radical:
Radical meaning: sun,day
Stroke animation: (the strokes are drawn the direction the picture is tipping)
Etymology:
This is a character that have looked pretty much the same during history.
It is basically the sun with the aura around it. There have been small variants like:
One early seal character that I find very interesting is this one:
In the next post we will talk about foot. This character form is having a foot inside the sun describing the suns movement over the sky.
Link to nciku usage of the character 日 (examples, sound etc)
http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E6%97%A5/1312649
Example words:
日本 Rì běn Japan / Japanese
日期 rì qī date
生日 shēng rì birthday
日报 rì bào daily newspaper
当日 dāng rì that very day / the same day
节日 jié rì
平日 píng rì an ordinary day
日照 rì zhào sunshine
日式 Rì shì Japanese style
同日 tóng rì same day / simultaneous
出生日期 chū shēng rì qī date of birth
每日 měi rì daily
chanelle77
September 26, 2008, 11:22 AMThe seal character with the "S" seems a bit similar to the yin and yang symbol (阴阳). Could there be a relation?
changye
September 26, 2008, 12:32 PMHi chanelle77,
Hehe, you have a wild imagination! Yin-Yang (阴阳) thoughts appeared in the "春秋战国" age when large seal scripts (大篆) were in use, and therefore it's difficult to completely deny the possibility you mentioned, although I'm afraid I have no information for proving your hypothesis. All I can say is that, at least, the "S" is not the S of "Superman"！
bababardwan
September 26, 2008, 02:13 PMchangye,
I knew Japan was Ri4ben3 but had never thought of the breakdown before now.I presume this is because Japan is the "land of the rising sun" and reflects it's eastward position relative to China?
mandarinboy
September 26, 2008, 02:51 PM
Are you sure Superman where not invented in China ;-) I have searched my book and asked my teachers but no one have any good answers to the "S" version. One thing that might be plausible, at least to me, is that it might be intended to mimic the heat waves you se when the sun is heating up the ground. That looks like s curves and it is the sun that creates them. I have no idea really but this triggers my interest very much. It might also be ilustrations of the suns rays. Yes, the characters for Japan is just as you wrote " the land of the rising sun" just as China is the middle kingdom (country)
chanelle77
September 27, 2008, 12:11 AMChangye: I totally agree :-) ! It is very interesting though...
changye
September 27, 2008, 03:54 AMHi mandarinboy,
I love the “heat wave” hypothesis very much. It’s plausible and much better than the S of “Superman”! Actually, the character “日” stirs the imagination. Some scholars even say that the dot inside indicates “Sunspot” (黑点). A very large sunspot is visible to the naked eye.
Anyway, the sun is extraordinarily important for human beings, so ancient people observed it very carefully. The sun has been a special existence in nature, and that might perhaps be the reason the sound “ri ” is rarely seen, except for “日”, in both ancient and modern Chinese.
P/S. As far as I know, 死 (death, die) is the only character that has the sound “si3”. Maybe, “death” is as special as the sun for human beings.
changye
September 27, 2008, 06:30 AMHi bababardwan,
“日本” was pronounced as “dzi-puon” after the 11th century, and the “dzi” was transcribed as “Ji” in “西儒耳目资”, a dictionary edited by a Jesuit in the early 17th century. The “dzi” was actually a fricative sound, but it sounded like “Ji” to Western ears. This is one of the etymologies of “Zipangu (Japan)” that appeared in “The Travels of Marco Polo.”
The Japanese reading of “日本”, Nippon (にっぽん), is based on 中古音 (middle Chinese sounds). “日” and “本” were pronounced approximately like “niet” and “puon” respectively in China before the 10th century, however, the Chinese reading “niet-puon” changed into “nippon” in Japan, since there was no double-vowels in Japanese in those days.
changye
September 26, 2008, 07:03 AMHi mandarinboy,
The one that has the radical 足 inside is just hilarious, and it really makes sense. I also found an interesting one in the web page below. Some seal scripts of 日 has “S” inside. It seems that ancient Chinese people knew the English word “sun”! Or does this mean “sunspot”?
http://www.internationalscientific.org/CharacterASP/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=%E6%97%A5&submitButton1=Etymology