Chinese Character Wiki
員

yuán

member

Original meaning: 

round

Depicts the round opening (口) of a cooking pot (鼎). Based on the original meaning "round", now written as 圓. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components
◎ iconic component

◎  Iconic component

  

characterless component

Depicts a circle.

鼎 iconic,remnant component

鼎  Iconic Remnant component

dǐng

  

cooking pot

Evolution

員 Oracle script (~1250-1000 BC)

Oracle script

(~1250-1000 BC)
員 Bronze script Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)

Bronze script

Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
員 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
員 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
員 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

员 (員) 

yuán

member; personnel, staff member; person; employee

Most common words with 員
Freq.
Word
Meaning

人员

staff

员

person

演员

performer

成员

member

委员会

committee

Component uses

Meaning component in 1 character (0 verified)

韻

Sound component in 8 characters (2 verified)

損 圓 勛 韻 隕 殞 鄖 篔

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*ɢʷ<r>en

hjwen

yuán

circle; round

*[ɢ]ʷə[n]

hjun

yún

(a particle)


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 82.9249% of movies

265th most common character in movies

200th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

10

Simplified

员

Unicode

U+54E1

Shuowen

“員，物數也。从貝，口聲。鼎，籀文从鼎。”


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