mín
people
Original meaning:
slave
Pictograph of an eye (目) being poked with something sharp. In ancient China, slaves were sometimes punished by blinding them with a sharp object. Based on the original meaning "slave". The meaning later shifted to "common person".
Components
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernComponent uses
Meaning component in 1 character (0 verified)
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*mi[ŋ] | mjin | mín | people |
Statistics
HSK level 3
Appears in 46.1637% of movies
661st most common character in movies
113th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 5 |
Unicode | U+6C11 |
Shuowen | “民,眾萌也。从古文之象。” |
Sources
季旭昇《說文新證》p.855
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