Origin

The character 欧 combines two parts. On the right, 欠 (a picture of a person with mouth open) is a radical associated with the mouth and speech. On the left, 区 provides a sound hint, telling you roughly how to pronounce the character. Together, these parts suggest something related to speech or singing—which is why the native Japanese readings mean "to sing" or "to spit out." When this character was used to write the foreign word "Europe," the sound-hint component 区 also gave the pronunciation オウ (ou), which matched the syllable needed for that word. The character's original meaning of singing or vocalization eventually faded, and it became mainly known as the name for the European continent.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).