他 | tā

In Mandarin Chinese, 他 (Pinyin: tā 🔊) is a personal pronoun “he” or “him”. It also can mean “other” or “another”.

According to Wiktionary, this character is a phono-semantic compound of semantic 亻, a radical form of 人 “person”, and phonetic 也 (yě 🔊, which, however, sounds nothing like tā). Lawrence J. Howell writes in his Etymological Dictionary of Han/Chinese Characters that 他 is

a variant form of 佗, and thus the meanings another person → other; separate.

他 did not become gender-specific until 20^th century:

Originally gender-neutral before the 1910s, when modern 她 (tā, “she; her”) was coined; now usually refers to males (also occasionally refers to females).

他 is used in many compounds in the meaning “other”/“another”:

他 + 人 = 他人 (tārén): other people; others 他 + 日 = 他日 (tārì): another day 他 + 国 = 他国 (tāguó): foreign country 他 + 心 = 他心 (tāxīn): ulterior motives

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