蛋 | dàn

In Mandarin Chinese, 蛋 (Pinyin: dàn 🔊) is a noun for “egg” and, by extention, for any egg-shaped object, such as testicle.

Juan Eduardo Cirlot wrote in his Dictionary of Symbols:

A great many prehistoric tombs in Russia and Sweden have revealed clay eggs which had been left there as emblems of immortality. In the language of Egyptian hieroglyphs, the determinative sign of the egg represents potentiality, the seed of generation, the mystery of life. This meaning persisted among the alchemists, who added explicitly the idea that it was the container for matter and for thought. In this way was the transition effected from the concept of the egg to the Egg of the World, a cosmic symbol which can be found in most symbolic traditions — Indian, Druidic, etc. The vault of space came to be known as an Egg, and this Egg consisted of seven enfolding layers — betokening the seven heavens or spheres of the Greeks. The Chinese believe that the first man had sprung from an egg dropped by Tien from heaven to float upon the primordial waters. The Easter egg is an emblem of immortality which conveys the essence of these beliefs. The golden egg from which Brahma burst forth is equivalent to the Pythagorean circle with a central point (or hole). But it was in Egypt that this symbol most frequently appeared. Egyptian naturalism — the natural curiosity of the Egyptians about the phenomena of life — must have been stimulated by the realization that a secret animal-growth comes about inside the closed shell, whence they derived the idea, by analogy, that hidden things (the occult, or what appears to be non-existent) may actively exist. In the Egyptian Ritual, the universe is termed the ‘egg conceived in the hour of the Great One of the dual force’. The god Ra is displayed resplendent in his egg. An illustration on a papyrus, in the Œdipus Ægyptiacus of Kircher, shows the image of an egg floating above a mummy, signifying hope of life hereafter. The winged globe and the beetle pushing its ball along have similar implications.

Wiktionary says that 蛋 is a phono-semantic compound of phonetic 延 (yán 🔊, abbreviated to 疋) and semantic 虫. By now you got used to the fact that the radical 虫 can be found in the name of almost every creature that is neither a bird nor a barnyard animal, so why not an egg then. Still, given its cosmological importance, one may wonder why the Chinese did not use a more egg-like symbol for it, say ⬭ or ⬯.

Compounds of 蛋 include

• 鸡 + 蛋 = 鸡蛋 (jīdàn 🔊): chicken egg
• 下 + 蛋 = 下蛋 (xiàdàn): to lay eggs
• 蛋 + 黄 = 蛋黄 (dànhuáng): egg yolk
• 蛋 + 白 = 蛋白 (dànbái): egg white
• 白 + 蛋白 = 白蛋白 (báidànbái): albumin

More photos related to eggs, hanzi and calligraphy @ Shutterstock.