Meaning & readings
bright, light
On’yomi メイ、ミョウ、ミン
Kun’yomi あ.かり、あか.るい、あか.るむ、あか.らむ、あき.らか、あ.ける、-あ.け、あ.く、あ.くる、あ.かす
Nanori あきら、あけ、あす、きら、け、さや、さやか、とし、はる、み、め
Origin
The character 明 combines two components that both relate to light: the sun on the left (日) and the moon on the right (月). Together, they express the idea of brightness—whether from the sun during the day or the moon at night. By joining these two luminous objects, the character captures the concept of light itself. This compound approach of stacking meaningful pictures was common in early Chinese character design.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 72
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #67 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+0660E