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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

漢

hàn
Han River, a major tributary of the Yangtze River
  • HSK 1
  • radical 水
  • 14 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

漢 (OC *n̥ˤar): semantic 水 (shuǐ) (“water”) + phonetic 熯 (OC *n̥ˤanʔ). Earliest attested in early Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, e.g. the 京師畯尊 /京师畯尊 (銘圖 11784), where it is used as a river name: 王涉漢伐楚.

熯 (OC *n̥ˤanʔ) (⿱𦰩火) depicts a person bound behind the back, mouth open toward the sky, over fire. It may be related to 灘 (OC *n̥ˤar), 歎 (OC *n̥ˤar), 嘆 (OC *n̥ˤar), 熯 (OC *n̥ˤanʔ), 暵 (OC *n̥ˤanʔ), and 難 (OC *n̥ˤar), in senses connected with drought, burning, or exclamation. From the middle Western Zhou onward, 𦰩 may have been confused with 黃 /黄 (huáng).

The usage for the Chinese ethnicity first appeared during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, claiming the Han dynasty as one of the golden ages of Chinese history. Before the Han dynasty, the Chinese referred to their land as 華夏 ("Huaxia"), and themselves as 諸華 ("various Hua people") or 諸夏 ("various people/descendants of the Xias"). "Xia" ("Summer; great, splendid") also gave the name to the first semi-legendary Chinese dynasty, the Xia Dinasty (夏朝).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • partChinese氵 “water”
  • partChinese革 “leather; animal hide”
  • partChinese大 “of great size; big; large; huge”

Meanings

character
  1. Han River, a major tributary of the Yangtze River
  2. the Milky Way; by extension, the sky; the heavens
  3. Han River, a river in Korea
  4. the Han dynasty
  5. the Han state or empire; its court, institutions, territory, or subjects
  6. a state, dynasty, or regime named Han, such as 蜀漢／蜀汉 (Shǔ Hàn), 成漢／成汉 (Chénghàn), 南漢／南汉 (Nánhàn), 後漢／后汉 (Hòuhàn), 北漢／北汉 (Běihàn), or the Han state of Chen Youliang

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

漢：漾也。東爲滄浪水。从水，難省聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. →漢水
  2. 銀河、天河稱為「漢」。 例：天漢、銀漢、河漢
  3. 朝代名
  4. 男子的通稱。 例：老漢、莽漢、流浪漢
  5. 漢口或武漢的簡稱。 例：京漢鐵路、粵漢鐵路
  6. 漢語的簡稱。 例：英漢辭典

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

How 漢 was written 字形演變

  1. 漢 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 漢 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 漢 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

  • Structural decomposition (chaizi) — See upstream
  • 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: 漢