源etymfun
About

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

顏

yán
forehead, especially the glabellar area
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • radical 頁
  • 18 strokes
  • 彦

Etymology graph

  • inherited
  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
  • related
React Flow
Press enter or space to select a node. You can then use the arrow keys to move the node around. Press delete to remove it and escape to cancel.
Press enter or space to select an edge. You can then press delete to remove it or escape to cancel.

點擊節點放大 · Click a node to zoom in

Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ŋraːn): phonetic 彥 (OC *ŋrans) + semantic 頁 (“head”).

Bronze inscription forms: Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ŋraːn): phonetic 产 (chǎn) + semantic 面 (“face”).

Various possibilities exist:

* Related to 額 (OC *ŋɡraːɡ, “forehead”) (Wang, 1982);

* From 迓 (OC *ŋraːs, “to receive; to welcome”) + nominalising suffix *-n (Schuessler, 2007);

* Related to Tibetan ངར (ngar, “front side”) (Schuessler, 2007).

* From a root *ŋ(ˤ)rar (“slope, nearly vertical side”), whence also 涯 (OC *ŋˤrar, “river bank”), 巘 (OC *ŋ(r)ar(ʔ), “hill”), & 山 (OC *s-ŋrar, “mountain”) (Baxter & Sagart, 2014).

* Cognate with Japhug tɯrŋa (“face”), Khroskyabs rŋá (Zhang, Jacques, and Lai, 2019).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese彥 “person of virtue and ability”
    • soundChinese厂 “cliff; habitable cave on a cliff”
    • meaningChinese彣 “variegated; literary talent”
      • soundChinese文 “original form of 紋／纹 (wén, “mark, pattern, design, tattoo, decoration”)”
      • meaningChinese彡 “hair”
  • soundChinese产
  • meaningChinese頁 “sheet (of paper)”
    • componentChinese首 “head”
    • componentChinese卩 “kneeling person”
  • meaningChinese面 “face (Classifier: 塊／块 c)”

Related: Tibetan ངར, Japhug tɯrŋa

Meanings

character
  1. forehead, especially the glabellar area
  2. countenance; facial expression
  3. color; hue
  4. prestige; dignity
  5. a surname
  6. ngan (Thai customary unit of area equal to 400 m²)

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 臉、面容。 例：容顏、和顏悅色、笑逐顏開
  2. 色彩。 例：顏料、顏色
  3. 姓。

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

How 顏 was written 字形演變

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