Vol I: New Start with My Name “陆”

I will start with one of the characters in my Chinese name “陆（Lu）” The origin, or creating process of Chinese Character is really different from English. Majority of the characters come from the hieroglyphics, meaning they depict the picture of some natural scene or human activities. Later, the characters went through eight major evolution periods and finally form the modern Chinese character. The graph shows the evolution of the character “陆”

The character on the very left is an example of the origin of Chinese called “甲骨文”, which are the inscriptions carved on bones or tortoise shells started of Shang Dynasty (the second dynasty in ancient Chinese history around 16th-11th century B.C.)

So let’s focus on the structure of the hieroglyphic character. The left part of the character looks like a mountain but turned to the right. The right part of the character is the combination of two same icons, which look like simple tents made with thatch. Since there are tents, there are residents. Thus, this character as a whole represents the mountains with people living in.

Later in the second revolution step, which is the second character from the left, you can notice that there is an extra “土 “added in at the bottom. This new icon is actually another character representing the soil and earth. Till this point, the meaning of the character “陆” extended to the general place where people live, which also indicates that ancient people move out of the mountain areas and started to settle down in the plain.

As the evolution continued, people tend to simplify the character and make is easier to write. Eventually, the look of the character changed too significantly to carry its graphic origin.

Other fun facts about this single character “陆”: It is the number 6 in traditional Chinese language! Imagine that 陆=6! And extended from its original meaning of land with residents, it can be used as “continuous” or “successive” combined with other single characters, such as “陆续“ （notice that, the single character “续” also means “elongated”! )

(Please give me suggestions on this Blog!!! Since I am an native speaker of Chinese, I’m not sure does this information interest you or can you understand my blog. Thank you so much for your feedback! (ง •_•)ง

Reference: http://www.vividict.com/WordInfo.aspx?id=2118