Dancing Flames in Chinese Characters: Unveiling the Journey of Chinese Characters.
Nice to see you again!
In the last article, we knew how the tail of a fish became “flame”, in this article, I’ll introduce the character “flame (火)” this time.
Maybe you’ve watched cartoons featuring lively fire spirits — vibrant flame burning and dancing. These flame spirits may appear as an orange ball (or circle) with three sharp cones (or triangles) protruding from the top of the ball (or circle).
Have you ever thought that the flame shape is cute like that?
Hmm, I don’t know if ancient people thought so, but they did engrave the flame in this shape, and named it “火”.
Let’s take a look at the following picture with numerous “火” characters.
More than three thousand years ago, the character “火” looked like an icon of a flame, you can observe that the earliest character ‘火’ features very stiff lines — to engrave characters on hard objects such as turtle shells or bronzes is undoubtedly a challenge.
As I mentioned in my last article, no matter what the reason, character simplification is unavoidable. Based on the shape of “flame”, people simplified this character, and it became similar to the appearance of the modern character “火”.
Do you feel that the character “flame” in Small seal script (Qin script) is full of classical charm?
Maybe the graphic of this character is too simple, the character “flame” has not changed much until now, except when it is used as a radical — it take another appearance “灬”, which is also like flame under cookware, right?
Today, when we encounter a Chinese character containing “火” or “灬”, the connotations associated with these characters are mostly related to phenomena or actions related to flame, such as flame (fire), light, cooking, etc., especially the radicals of “火”. I haven’t come across any exception yet. (If you have, please tell me.)
And what about “灬”?
As the character “魚” (fish), which was originally an icon of fish, the four dots in “灬” should have represented a fish tail but over the time, it became the shape of fire. (You’ll find out more in my last article.) There are also some exceptions in this shape “灬”. In addition to the character “魚” (fish), the character “鳥” (bird) also contains this shape “灬”.
Now you know, when you encounter the radical “火” or “灬”, you are witnessing the creative power of the ancients… and their artistic ingenuity!
Alright, let’s guess what character that I will introduce in the upcoming article?
