Chinese Pictographs: Characters That Began as Pictures

A pictograph in Chinese (象形, xiàngxíng) is a character that began as a drawing of the thing it names. 日 (rì, the sun), 月 (yuè, the moon), 山 (shān, mountain), 木 (mù, tree) and 馬 (mǎ, horse) are the standard examples. The MOE dictionary defines 象形 as the way of making a character by drawing the shape of an object, and gives 日 as a round sun and 月 as a crescent moon.

Pictographs are a small share of the script. Most characters are built from parts, with a meaning part and a sound part (see how Traditional characters are built, which gives the rough shares). What makes pictographs worth knowing is that they are the building blocks for everything else. And Traditional forms keep the picture better than Simplified in many of the best-known cases.

Pictographs where Traditional still shows the picture

The Traditional shapes below can still be read as pictures. The explanations are the traditional ones taught for these characters; the shapes have drifted for more than three thousand years, so use them as memory hooks, since they are not exact drawings.

Character	Pinyin · Zhuyin	Meaning	The picture	Strokes: Traditional → Simplified
馬	mǎ · ㄇㄚˇ	horse	head and mane at the top, legs as the row of dots at the bottom	10 → 3 (马)
魚	yú · ㄩˊ	fish	head at the top, a scaled body (田), a tail as the dots at the bottom	11 → 8 (鱼)
鳥	niǎo · ㄋㄧㄠˇ	bird	head with an eye, body, and feet or tail feathers at the bottom	11 → 5 (鸟)
龜	guī · ㄍㄨㄟ	turtle	a turtle seen from the side, with shell, head and legs	16 → 7 (龟)
門	mén · ㄇㄣˊ	door	two door leaves side by side	8 → 3 (门)
車	chē · ㄔㄜ	cart, car	a cart from above, with wheels and an axle	7 → 4 (车)
雨	yǔ · ㄩˇ	rain	a line for the sky, a cloud, and drops falling	8
貝	bèi · ㄅㄟˋ	shell	a cowrie shell, once used as money	7 → 4 (贝)

Two things stand out in the table. First, 龜 (16 strokes) and 馬 (10) look heavy, but the extra strokes are the head, the tail and the legs, which is what makes them memorable. Second, the Simplified forms 马, 鸟, 龟 and 门 are derived from cursive handwriting and show much less of the picture (鱼 keeps its head and body, and only the tail has become a stroke). If you care about the picture, you will find more of it in Traditional.

貝 is a useful example of how a pictograph lives on inside other characters. 買 (mǎi, to buy), 賣 (mài, to sell), 財 (cái, wealth), 貴 (guì, expensive) and 貨 (huò, goods) all carry 貝, because shells stood for money. The Simplified 贝 carries the same job, but the picture is gone.

Pictographs that are the same in both scripts

Character	Pinyin · Zhuyin	Meaning	The picture
日	rì · ㄖˋ	sun, day	a round sun
月	yuè · ㄩㄝˋ	moon, month	a crescent moon
山	shān · ㄕㄢ	mountain	peaks rising from a base
木	mù · ㄇㄨˋ	tree, wood	trunk, branches and roots
水	shuǐ · ㄕㄨㄟˇ	water	a stream with flowing sides
火	huǒ · ㄏㄨㄛˇ	fire	flames rising
田	tián · ㄊㄧㄢˊ	field	plots of farmland
目	mù · ㄇㄨˋ	eye	an eye, turned upright
手	shǒu · ㄕㄡˇ	hand	a hand with fingers
口	kǒu · ㄎㄡˇ	mouth	an open mouth
羊	yáng · ㄧㄤˊ	sheep	head with horns
牛	niú · ㄋㄧㄡˊ	ox, cow	head with horns

The pictures are clearest for the first six, which also appear as parts of many other characters: 林 (lín, grove) is two 木, 森 (sēn, forest) is three, and 果 (guǒ, fruit) is fruit on a tree.

A picture does not always mean a picture

A character can start as a pictograph and then be borrowed for a different word. 來 (lái, to come) began as a drawing of a wheat plant, and was borrowed for the word “to come” because the sounds were similar. The word for wheat came to be written with a different character, 麥 (mài). 我 (wǒ, I) is another case: an old form showing a weapon was borrowed for the pronoun. Neither character shows its original picture now, and neither hint helps you remember the current meaning.

So pictograph origins help for a few dozen characters. For everything else, you are looking at a combination of parts. A useful middle way is to learn the pictographs as components: 休 (xiū, to rest) is a person (人) beside a tree (木), 明 (míng, bright) is usually taught as sun and moon together. Chinese phonetic components covers the larger group that gives sound hints.

Where the idea comes from

The idea that Chinese characters fall into types goes back to the 說文解字 (Shuōwén Jiězì), a character dictionary compiled by Xu Shen (許慎) around the year 100. The best-known account of the 六書 (liù shū, “six writings”) classification is in it, and 象形 is one of the six. The earliest large body of Chinese writing, the 甲骨文 (jiǎgǔwén, oracle bone script), dates to more than three thousand years ago, and many of its signs look far more like pictures than modern characters do. The long history of how shapes changed is in the history of Traditional characters.

How to use pictographs when learning

1. Learn the pictograph set early. They tend to come early in beginner material, they have few strokes, and they appear inside more complex characters.
2. Use the picture as a hook, then move to the word. Say 山 (shān) with the mountain in mind, then learn 山水 and 高山 as words.
3. Do not force a picture on other characters. Most characters are not pictures. If a mnemonic story is not in a character’s etymology, leave it out.
4. Write them by hand. Pictographs are short, and writing them teaches the stroke order that more complex characters reuse. See how to memorize Chinese characters.

Zhong teaches Traditional characters first and checks your strokes when you handwrite.

Related reading

• How Traditional characters are built
• The history of Traditional characters
• How to memorize Chinese characters
• Easy Chinese characters to learn first