合 | hé

In Mandarin Chinese, 合 (Pinyin: hé 🔊) is used as an adjective for “whole”, “entire”; an adverb “together”; and a verb meaning “to add up”, “to be equal to”, “to close”, “to combine”, “to join”, “to unite”, etc.

According to Wiktionary, 合 is an ideogrammic compound of 亼 “to gather from three sides” and 口 “mouth”:

Two mouths speaking together.

Uncle Hanzi says that “top is inverted mouth, bottom mouth, meaning to agree” and adds another explanation: “pot and lid join”. In her Chinese Calligraphy Sourcebook, Yat-Ming Cathy Ho writes:

The top inward-sloping strokes of hé and the horizontal stroke beneath them mean “heaven”, “people” and “earth”.

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

As per 口 (cavity → open container) + an abbreviated form of 今 (contain) → press/fit together a lid on a container, containing objects inside → fit; join; put together; meet. Extended meanings include suit; match; agree/coincide with; correspond to; be correct; add (to); combine; set/adjust (a device); adapt oneself to; and check (with/against).

Some compounds of 合 include

• 合 + 金 = 合金 (héjīn): alloy
• 合 + 十 = 合十 (héshí): “ten together”, i.e. to put the palms together (as a Buddhist greeting)
• 六 + 合 = 六合 (liùhé): the six directions (east, west, north, south, up and down); the whole country
• 百 + 合 = 百合 (bǎihé): lily (“for the numerous segmented and overlapping scales on the bulb of the lily”)
• 好 + 合 = 好合 (hǎohé): happy union (marriage)
• 回 + 合 = 回合 (huíhé): round (of sports, negotiations etc.)

In Japanese, 百合 (lily) is pronounced yuri. Yuri is also a common female given name.

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

兆 | zhào

In Mandarin Chinese, 兆 (Pinyin: zhào) is a word for “sign” or “omen”. In Mainland China, it also means “million” (i.e. 10⁶), as in 兆瓦 (zhào wǎ), “megawatt”. However, in Japanese the very kanji 兆 stands for “trillion”, i.e. “million million” (this meaning is now obsolete in Mainland China).

Alternative, and less ambiguous, way of expressing the number 10⁶ is 百万 / 百萬 (bǎiwàn), that is, 百 “hundred” by 万 “ten thousand”. Alternative way of expressing the number 10¹² is 亿万 / 億萬 (yìwàn), i.e. 亿 (10⁸) by 万 (10⁴). In Mainland China, 太 (tài) is used as prefix “tera-” (10¹²).

According to Uncle Hanzi, 兆 originally represented “the cracks in oracle bones caused by fire which were thought to be signs (omens) of the future”.

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白 | bái

In Mandarin Chinese, 白 (Pinyin: bái 🔊) means “white”, “clear”, “pure”, “bright” and a number of other meanings which at some point probably were related to colour white: “spoken language”, “free of charge”, “in vain” or “funeral”.

Does it look and sound familiar? This is because we’ve already came across 百 (bǎi), “hundred”. You may also recall that the shape of 百 is a combination of 一 and 白.

While 白 looks like a modification of 日, “sun” or “day”, Uncle Hanzi links 白 with the moon. However, Wiktionary says its original meaning was “acorn”:

The character acquired its current meaning of white from the color of the acorn’s flesh. The original meaning has been lost.

More photos related to acorns, colour white and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

百 | bǎi

In Mandarin Chinese, 百 (Pinyin: bǎi 🔊; not to be confused with bā, 🔊) is a word for “hundred”. It is often used figuratively, in a sense “numerous”, “countless”, “every”, “all”, “entirely”, “at all”, etc. When they actually mean the number 100, “one hundred”, Chinese say exactly that: 一百 (yī bǎi 🔊).

There is a great variety of historical forms of this character. 百 is a phono-semantic compound where pronunciation of seemingly unrelated word 白 (bái) “white” is combined with meaning of 一. (Recall that, apart from “one”, 一 also means “each”, “every”, “whole” and so on). A good trick to remember this character is to write the number 100 with “boxy” zeros, then rotate it 90° clockwise.

Another hanzi with the same meaning, 佰, is mainly used for accounting purposes.

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