婚姻
hūn​yīn HSK7

marriage

婚 hūn get married

Phonosemantic compound. 女 represents the meaning and 昏 represents the sound.

Components

女
女 Meaning component
nǚ, nü woman
昏
昏 Sound component
hūn, hún twilight

Character Evolution

Bronze form
Bronze Late Western Zhou ~800 BC
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-Sagartxwonm̥ˤu[n] marriage

說文解字

《說文》：“婚，婦家也。禮，娶婦以昏時。婦人陰也，故曰婚。从女，从昏，昏亦聲。，籀文婚。”

Sources

Character origin
漢語多功能字庫
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-Sagart
Historical images
Academia Sinica
Etymology
Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)

姻 yīn marriage connection

Phonosemantic compound. 女 represents the meaning and 因 represents the sound.

Components

女
女 Meaning component
nǚ, nü woman
因
因 Sound component
yīn cause

Character Evolution

Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Western Jin 266-316 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Old Chinese
Zhengzhangqin

說文解字

《說文》：“姻，壻家也，女之所因，故曰姻。从女，从因，因亦聲。婣，籀文姻从。”

Sources

Character origin
漢語多功能字庫
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Zhengzhang Shangfang
Historical images
Academia Sinica
Etymology
Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)