It seems like last week people liked the post about 化, so I’m doing it again. This time, we’re talking about 为. It originally depicted a hand guiding an elephant and meant “to do”. To me, this character origin puts on display what an inspiration animals were to the ancient Chinese when designing their writing system. This character is everywhere. The most important use is probably 为什么 (wèi shén me), which means “why”, or literally “for” + “what”. The rising tone version is harder to explain, but we can see it means “make” in something like 为生 (wéi shēng) which means to make a living.

For next time, let me know if there are any specific characrers you’d like to know about. Otherwise, I’m kind of going down the frequency list and picking out characters that have interesting original meanings, so generally sticking with true logograms because the meaning + sound component or sound loan or empty component characters would be boring imo. I’m thinking 心 (heart) or 儿 (child) could be cool. Or maybe 解 (to divide/solve) or 能 (can).

This etymology is from the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters on Pleco, all credit to them. I highly recommend it as a resource for anyone interested. There are many, many fascinating 汉字. 大家加油！