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Etymology data from Wiktionary via Wiktextract (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese character data from the 說文解字, the Taiwan MOE 國語辭典簡編本 (CC BY-ND 3.0 TW) and HSK/TOCFL lists.

Explanations are written by a local model (gemma4) and only published after a verification pass against the cited sources. How it works.

Chinese

江

jiāng
Yangtze River
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 水
  • 6 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *kroːŋ): semantic 氵 (“water”) + phonetic 工 (OC *koːŋ).

; "Yangtze River"

Borrowed from a substrate Austroasiatic language as Proto-Sino-Tibetan *kl(j)u(ŋ/k) (“river, valley”); compare Proto-Mon-Khmer *ruŋ ~ ruuŋ ~ ruəŋ (“river”) > Proto-Vietic *k-roːŋ (“river”) (Vietnamese sông), Mon ကြုၚ် (krɜŋ, “small river, creek”).

Derivative: 港 (OC *kroːŋʔ, *ɡloːŋs, “harbour”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*kl(j)u(ŋ/k) “river; valley”
  • meaningChinese水 “water (Classifier: 瓶 m; 樽 c; 滴 m c; 池 m c; 盆 m c; 杯 m c)”
  • soundChinese工 “labour; work (Classifier: 份 c)”

Related: Proto-Mon-Khmer *ruŋ, Proto-Vietic *k-roːŋ, Vietnamese sông, Mon ကြုၚ်

Meanings

character
  1. Yangtze River
  2. river (Classifier: 條／条)
  3. (～日) (telegraphy) the third day of a month
  4. a surname, Jiang (Mainland China), Chiang (Taiwan), Kong (Hong Kong), and Kiang (archaic)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

江：水。出蜀湔氐徼外崏山，入海。从水工聲。

Xu Shen, c. 100 CE — the first analytical dictionary of Chinese characters.

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 大河的通稱。 例：三江五嶽
  2. 指長江。 例：江南、偏安江左
  3. 江蘇省的簡稱。 例：江浙
  4. 姓。

© Ministry of Education, Taiwan — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW, shown unaltered.

How 江 was written 字形演變

  1. 江 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 江 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 江 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 江 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 江 in Regular script
    Regular
    楷書
    since c. 200 CE

Historical forms collected by the legacy etymfun dataset; most characters have several attested variants.

Sources

  • Historical glyph forms (zdic.net 字形演变) — Rights unverified
  • HSK / TOCFL word lists — Facts (levels)
  • 教育部《國語辭典簡編本》 (Taiwan MOE) — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW
  • 說文解字 Shuowen Jiezi (Xu Shen, c. 100 CE) — Public domain
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 江