熊 | xióng

In Mandarin Chinese, 熊 (Pinyin: xióng 🔊) means “bear” (a carnivoran mammal). Here is a possible mnemonic for those whose bear experience is limited to teddy bears: the pronunciation is similar to German schön 🔊 “beautiful” or non-standard (but widely understood) Russian щён “puppy”.

According to Wiktionary,

This character originally represented an onomatopoetic word [熊熊 {xióngxióng, “(of flame) raging”}]. Later its phonetic compound 能, the character for the Old Chinese word “bear”, was borrowed for another word. This character thus began to represent the word “bear” instead.

Lawrence J. Howell writes in his Etymological Dictionary of Han/Chinese Characters:

As per 能 (bear) + 火 fire → bear (← ancient belief associating bears with the spirit of fire).

(火 has got reduced to the four short strokes 灬 on the bottom of 熊.)

True, the bear is a complex character, maybe because you are not supposed to mention him too often (just as you are not supposed to abuse words like “love”)? At least 熊 does not contain any kind of “dog” in it (but see below).

熊 is a “simplified” form of a traditional character 熊. I put “simplified” in quotes because it does not look like a simplification at all. Both hanzi have 14 strokes and you really need to look hard to spot the difference, which boils down to a couple of strokes going askew.

Now there are bears and there are bears:

• 白 + 熊 = 白熊 (báixióng): polar bear
• 人 + 熊 = 人熊 (rénxióng): brown bear
• 马 + 熊 = 马熊 (mǎxióng): another word for brown bear (literally “horse-bear”)
• 狗 + 熊 = 狗熊 (gǒuxióng): Asian black bear (literally “dog-bear”)
• 浣 + 熊 = 浣熊 (huànxióng 🔊): raccoon (literally “wash-bear”)
• 熊 + 猫 = 熊猫 (xióngmāo 🔊): panda (literally “bear cat”)

Well, phylogenetically, raccoons are not bears (and red pandas are not foxes), but here you are.

More photos related to bears, beads and sea glass @ Shutterstock.