Origin

Water is the key to this character's meaning—the left component shows liquid or a body of water. The right part, which sounds like "wan," is a sound hint that tells you roughly how to pronounce the character, not what it means. Together, the water radical and the sound component form a character that describes a curved indentation of water along a coastline, which is exactly what a bay or inlet is. The curved shape of the right component even hints at how bays curve into the land.

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