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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

班

bān
group; party; class
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 1
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 玉
  • 10 strokes

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  • derived
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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 珏 (“pieces of jade”) + 刀 (“knife”) – to cut jade to pieces with knife. The pieces of jade appear as a more conservative version 玨. The knife in the middle is well visibile in the conservative variant 𤤻. Unrelated to 师.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *(b/p)ral (“to leave, depart, separate”) (STEDT). Cognate with Tibetan བྲལ་བ (bral ba, “to be separated”), འཕྲལ་བ ('phral ba, “to cause to be separated, to separate”), Miju phɑ̆l⁵³ (“to pull (weeds)”), phɹɯl⁵⁵ lɑ³⁵ (“to collapse”), Thulung phal si- (“to collapse”), Burmese ပြား (pra:, “various”), Jingpho pə³¹-ran³¹.

Karlgren (1933) grouped 班 (OC *praːn), 半 (OC *paːns), and 釆 (OC *brens) into one word family.

Schuessler (2007) also pointed to Austroasiatic comparanda semantically closer to Chinese; such as Khmer រាល (riəl, “to spread, extend, distribute”) and Khmer ព្រាល (priəl, “to spread”) with causative prefix *p-.

Possibly the same etymon as 斑 (OC *praːn, “variegated, spotted, striped”), which may be cognate to 羆 (OC *pral, “brown bear”) (Zhang, 2019).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • ideaChinese珏 “pieces of jade”
  • ideaChinese刀 “knife; blade (Classifier: 把 m c g h j mb md w x; 張／张 c h; 叢／丛 mn; 支 mn mn-t)”

Related: Tibetan བྲལ་བ, Miju phɑ̆l⁵³, Thulung phal si-, Burmese ပြား, Jingpho pə³¹-ran³¹, Khmer រាល, Khmer ព្រាល

Words built on it: 上班, 下班, 加班

Meanings

character
  1. group; party; class
  2. squad
  3. shift; work shift
  4. opera troupe
  5. to divide; to distribute
  6. to spread out

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

班：分瑞玉。从𤤴，从刀。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 為了工作或學習目的而編成的小型團體。 例：戲班、資優班、五年一班
  2. 提供學習機會，採分班授課方式的行業。 例：補習班、才藝班、職訓班
  3. 按時間分成的工作段落。 例：值班、輪班、三班制
  4. 軍隊中編制的單位。屬於排，通常由十人組成。
  5. 回、還。 例：班師回朝
  6. 固定時間行駛的。 例：班車、班機

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

How 班 was written 字形演變

  1. 班 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 班 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 班 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 班 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 班