Meaning & readings
Sino-, China
Origin
The character 漢 combines water (the three-dot radical on the left) with a sound component on the right that suggests the pronunciation "kan." The water radical points to the Han River, a major waterway in China that flows through the region historically associated with the Han Dynasty and Han Chinese culture. Over time, the character came to represent the Han people and Chinese civilization more broadly, with the water component serving as a geographical or cultural anchor rather than describing water itself.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 氵
- 𦰩
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 漢語 かんご Japanese word of Chinese origin; Sino-Japanese word
- 漢詩 かんし Chinese poem; Chinese poetry
- 漢字 かんじ kanji; Chinese character
- 漢文 かんぶん Chinese classical writing; Chinese classics
- 漢和 かんわ China and Japan
- 巨漢 きょかん giant
- 痴漢 ちかん molester; groper
- 漢方 かんぽう kampō; traditional (herbal) medicine based on ancient Chinese medicine
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 85
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1487 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+06F22