Chinese Kanji Etymology Definitions
– Free Online Kanji Etymology Dictionary –

Hikaru Morimoto and I collaborated on research into Chinese characters for nearly a dozen years, concluding with his death in 2004. At the time of his passing, we had prepared 4,000 etymologies organized largely along the lines of the word families in Chinese model developed by Tokyo University professor Akiyasu Todo (1915-1985). Distinguishing our etymologies from Todo's was the viewpoint that phonosemantic principles apply to the initial consonants and the vowels O and U in ancient Chinese.

In April 2005 I created the Kanji Networks dictionary site. The site began with 1,945 of the etymologies Morimoto and I had prepared. Later I added the remaining of the 4,000 original etymologies.

These 4,000 characters were subsequently redacted on two occasions. The first redaction was carried out following the insight that phonosemantics are at work in the final consonants of ancient Chinese, complementing what we had found earlier with regard to the initial consonants and the vowels O and U. It was at this time that Todo's word families were replaced with the ones according to which Kanji Networks is presently organized.

The second redaction was undertaken when the workings of initial consonant shifts in ancient Chinese became evident. This discovery spoke most to the question of how sound note elements function in the characters, but also suggested fresh angles from which to view the etymologies of characters in which initial consonant shifts had taken place.

I remain in the process of a thorough review of the etymologies for the Todo-modeled characters, and continue finding the occasional interpretation demanding revision. Completion of the revision process is linked to the promulgation of a new official list of characters in Japan, now expected to take place late in 2010 or early in 2011. (The new list is slated to add 196 characters while deleting 5: 匁,勺, 錘, 銑 and 脹.)

Subsequently I wrote and added 2,500 etymologies to the dictionary, raising the number of entries to its current total of 6,500. This increase of 60% in the number of entries allowed the semantic threads between distinct characters to emerge with ever greater clarity, and the data was given a third redaction accordingly.

The following chart presents examples of elements that appear frequently in compound characters. Each element is assigned a semantic keyword (denoted as a "descriptor"). The third column presents a representative selection of compound characters in which the element appears and exercises the semantic influence noted. The examples are in no particular order. Note that the semantic descriptors do not necessarily match the elements' meanings when they are used as independent characters. Click on any character to view its complete etymology.

In a final note regarding updates, I replaced the previous semantic descriptor for the Initial N- Consonant Network (Flexible) with Supple, as the latter nuance is more frequently represented in the etymologies than the former.

Remaining Characters
Naturally, 6,500 characters is but a fraction of all those that have ever been created. The Japanese standard is considered to be Dai Kan-Wa Jiten (大漢和辞典: revised and expanded version of 1960; edited by 諸橋轍次 [Morohashi Tetsuji] inter alia), which contains 50,000 characters. In China, a 1994 book lists 85,000 while another publication said to be on its way will apparently break the six-digit mark.

For all that, a random sampling of the 50,000 Morohashi characters suggests that well over half are alternate forms and that another large chunk are personal nouns. The sampling also reveals thousands of characters for which the original significations and/or historical usages are uncertain (many of these refer to plants or to insects and other small creatures). That leaves, according to my rough calculations, approximately 4,000 characters for which etymologies might be produced with confidence. I hope to add as many of these as possible to the Kanji Networks corpus in coming years.

Credit for all that is good and useful in this dictionary belongs to Hikaru Morimoto. With me rests the blame for everything else.

Lawrence J. Howell, May 2009

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