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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

福

fú
blessing; happiness; prosperity; good fortune
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • radical 示
  • 14 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Etymology 1

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *pɯɡ): semantic 示 + phonetic 畐 (OC *pʰrɯɡ, *bɯɡ).

Proto-Sino-Tibetan [Term?]. Cognate with 富 (OC *pɯɡs, “rich”), Tibetan ཕྱུགས (phyugs, “livestock”).

Etymology 4

For pronunciation and definitions of 福 – see 褔 (“to be filled with; to brim with; to have in abundance; etc.”).

(This character is an erroneous or mistaken form of 褔).

Perhaps a beautified form (雅化) of 北 (pak, “North”).

Etymology 6

Unclear. May be a beautified form (雅化) of a word meaning "cape" (compare 岬).

Alternatively, the "Nan'an county toponymical records" (《南安縣地名志》), 1981, interprets the local place name 長福 /长福 (Tn̂g-hah) as "sunburnt for a long time", and provides 長𣆗 /长𣆗 as the original form. Compare 暍 (hahⁿ, “to burn or dry (of the sunlight)”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese示 “to show; to reveal; to indicate; to notify; to instruct”
  • soundChinese畐 “full, filled”

Related: Tibetan ཕྱུགས

Words built on it: 幸福, 福利, 祝福

Meanings

character
  1. blessing; happiness; prosperity; good fortune
  2. to bless
  3. a surname, Fu

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

福：祐也。从示，畐聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 富貴壽考等令人感到滿意幸運的事。與「禍」相對。 例：幸福、享福、口福
  2. 幸運的、吉祥的。 例：福相、福星、福氣
  3. 古時婦女行萬福禮。 例：戲臺上，王熙鳳對賈母福了一回，請安後便坐下閒談。

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

How 福 was written 字形演變

  1. 福 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 福 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 福 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 福 in Clerical script
    Clerical
    隸書
    Han
  5. 福 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: 福