Radical 212, 龍, 龙, or 竜 meaning "dragon", is one of the two of the 214 Kangxi radicals that are composed of 16 strokes. The character arose as a stylized drawing of a Chinese dragon,[1] and refers to a version of the dragon in each East Asian culture:
- Chinese dragon, Lóng in Chinese
- Japanese dragon, Ryū or Tatsu in Japanese
- Korean dragon, Ryong or Yong in Korean
- Vietnamese dragon, Rồng in Vietnamese
It may also refer to the Dragon as it appears in the Chinese zodiac. It is also a common surname.
In the Kangxi Dictionary 14 characters (out of 40,000) are under this radical.
It occurs as a phonetic complement in some fairly common Chinese characters, for example 聾 = "deaf", which is composed of 龍 "dragon" and the "ear" 耳 radical, "a word with meaning related to ears and pronounced similarly to 龍": "dragon gives sound, ear gives meaning".
Characters with Radical 212
| strokes | character |
|---|---|
| +0 | 龍 |
| +2 | 龎 |
| +3 | 龏 龐 |
| +4 | 龑 |
| +5 | 龒 |
| +6 | 龓 龔 龕 |
| +16 | 龖 |
| +17 | 龗 |
| +32 | 龘 |
| +48 | 𪚥 |
Literature
- Fazzioli, Edoardo (1987). Chinese calligraphy : from pictograph to ideogram : the history of 214 essential Chinese/Japanese characters. calligraphy by Rebecca Hon Ko. New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN 0-89659-774-1.
- Leyi Li: “Tracing the Roots of Chinese Characters: 500 Cases”. Beijing 1993, ISBN 978-7-5619-0204-2
References
- ^ 龍: bottom left: jaws (open downwards); top left: back of head; right side: body and legs; right bottommost stroke: tail