Chinese Character Wiki
歡

huān

happy

Phonosemantic compound. 欠 represents the meaning and 雚 represents the sound. 欠 (yawn) is a pictograph of a person with an open mouth, used here to represent a person joyfully laughing.

Components
雚 sound component

雚  Sound component

guàn, huán

  

heron

欠 iconic component

欠  Iconic component

qiàn

  

yawn, deficient

Depicts a person opening their mouth to laugh.

Evolution

歡 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

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

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
歡 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

欢 (歡) 

huān

happy, pleased, glad; joy; to enjoy; joyous; happy; pleased

Most common words with 歡
Freq.
Word
Meaning

喜欢

to like

欢迎

to welcome

欢乐

gaiety

欢

joyous

狂欢

party

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*qʷʰˤar

xwan

huān

rejoice; joyous


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 96.4921% of movies

148th most common character in movies

685th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

21

Simplified

欢

Unicode

U+6B61

Shuowen

“歡，喜樂也。从欠，雚聲。”


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