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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

父

fù
father (male parent)
  • Pictogram
  • HSK 3
  • radical 父
  • 4 strokes

Etymology graph

  • inherited
  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
  • related
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Origin

Pictogram (象形) – A hand holding a stone blade, referring to a man working with a stone axe.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *paʔ (“male; father”).

Regular development from Middle Chinese would lead to the labiodental fù in Mandarin, but the colloquial word resisted the sound changes and is now written as 爸 (bà), with the 巴 (bā) phonetic component added to it to indicate the unchanged bilabial initial.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • partChinese八 “eight”
  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*paʔ “male; father”
  • partChinese乂 “original form of 刈 (yì, “to weed; to mow”)”

Words built on it: 爸, 父母, 布, 爺, 父親

Meanings

character
  1. father (male parent)
  2. Used to address a male elder member of a family.
  3. father (pioneering male figure in a particular field)
  4. Father; God the Father

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

父：矩也。家長率教者。从又舉杖。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 稱謂

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

How 父 was written 字形演變

  1. 父 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 父 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 父 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  4. 父 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  5. 父 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  6. 父 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 父