Chinese Character Wiki
昌

chāng

prosperous

Original meaning: 

call loudly

Originally composed of 口 (mouth) and 日 (sun), representing a call in the morning to wake people up at sunrise to start working. Based on the original meaning "call loudly", now written as 唱. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components
日 iconic component

日  Iconic component

rì

  

sun

口 iconic component

口  Iconic component

kǒu

  

mouth

The modern form looks like 曰 (to speak).

Evolution

昌 Oracle script (~1250-1000 BC)

Oracle script

(~1250-1000 BC)
昌 Bronze script Late Spring and Autumn (~500 BC)

Bronze script

Late Spring and Autumn (~500 BC)
昌 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

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

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

昌  

chāng

light of sun; good, proper; prosperous; flourishing

昌  

Chāng

surname Chang

Most common words with 昌
Freq.
Word
Meaning

昌

prosperous

南昌

also Nanchang county

武昌

Wuchang district of Wuhan city 武漢市|武汉市[Wǔ​hàn​shì], Hubei

南昌市

Nanchang prefecture level city and capital of Jiangxi province 江西省 in southeast China

李昌镐

Lee Chang-ho (1975-), South Korean Go player

Component uses

Meaning component in 3 characters (0 verified)

倡 閶 阊

Sound component in 9 characters (1 verified)

唱 倡 猖 娼 菖 閶 阊 鯧 鲳

Statistics

HSK level 6

Appears in 0.9130% of movies

2793rd most common character in movies

1606th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

8

Unicode

U+660C

Shuowen

“昌，美言也。从日，从曰。一曰日光也。《詩》曰：‘東方昌矣。’，籀文昌。”


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