In Mandarin Chinese, 北 (Pinyin: běi 🔊) means “north” or “northern”. It also could be a verb meaning “to be defeated” or “to fail”. Not surprisingly, there are many placenames containing 北, such as
- 北 + 京 = 北京 (Běijīng): “northern capital”; Beijing
- 台 / 臺 + 北 = 台北 / 臺北 (Táiběi): Taipei
- 口 + 北 = 口北 (kǒuběi): area beyond the Great Wall
According to Wiktionary, 北 is an ideogrammic compound depicting two men back to back:
Originally meaning “back”; the character 背 refers to the original word.
The sense of “north” is derived from “back (of body)”: “back” → “to turn the back to; to retreat” → “north”.
The ancient Chinese value the southern direction and houses are traditionally oriented along a north-south axis, as evident in the fengshui theory and orientation of buildings in Chinese Neolithic sites. North is the direction the back is oriented to when the person is facing south.
Lawrence J. Howell writes in his Etymological Dictionary of Han/Chinese Characters:
The relevant oracle bone form of this character shows two figures, one with his back turned → turn one’s back to the enemy and flee (along a winding course) → flee → north (← flee to the north; or, turn one’s back to the cold north wind) → go northward.
Well if you turn your back “to the cold north wind” and walk, I guess you rather will be travelling south — unless you are an enemy from the North, one of the 北狄 (Běidí), i.e. “Northern Barbarians”; then you’d retreat northward still facing your victorious adversary. (That would be ancient Chinese who, naturally, lived in the centre of their Sinocentric universe.) I presume this links the symbol for the north with “to be defeated” or “to fail”.
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