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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

藍

lán
blue
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 艸
  • 18 strokes
  • 兰

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  • borrowed
  • derived
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  • meaning component
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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ɡ·raːm): semantic 艸 (“grass”) + phonetic 監 (OC *kraːm, *kraːms).

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *g-ram (“indigo”); cognate with Lepcha ᰛᰤᰨᰮ (ryom), Mru [script needed] (charam), Tibetan རམས (rams, “indigo”) (STEDT; Schuessler, 2007; Hill, 2019). However, Laufer (1916) considers the Tibetan word to be borrowed from Chinese.

Schuessler (2007) considers this an areal word, possibly from Southeast Asia; cf. Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *taʀum (“indigo plant and dye”) (> Malay tarum).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*g-ram “indigo”
  • meaningChinese艸 “grass”
  • soundChinese監 “to supervise; to oversee”
    • ideaChinese臥 “to lie down”
      • ideaChinese臣 “slave; servant; captive”
      • ideaChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”
    • ideaChinese皿 “dish; vessel”

Related: Lepcha ᰛᰤᰨᰮ, Tibetan རམས, Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *taʀum, Malay tarum

Meanings

character
  1. blue
  2. a plant used to make indigo
  3. Brassica oleracea
  4. related to the pro-unification pan-Blue coalition of Taiwan
  5. supportive of the Hong Kong Police Force and the Hong Kong government
  6. mana points or magic points

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

藍：染青艸也。从艸監聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 像晴空的顏色。 例：蔚藍、湛藍、藍天白雲
  2. 姓。

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

How 藍 was written 字形演變

  1. 藍 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  2. 藍 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 藍 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: 藍