Beginner Lesson 14.2 – Chinese Characters: 现在点分两下午

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Learn How To Write Chinese Characters For Telling Time

Learn how to write Chinese characters for telling time. Understand the character construction, and find their Radicals.

  • Chinese Radicals: 王  土  刀  灬(火)
  • Chinese Characters for telling time: 现  在  点  分  两  下  午
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CHINESE RADICALS

CHINESE CHARACTERS

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2 Comments

  • I always found it odd that “Wang” means king yet it’s a common family name, like is everyone a king? Maybe it’s a modern thing? I’d think having certain words as a name would be seen as insolent in an older class based society, but maybe I’m overthinking it, and they don’t really care what your name is…

    • Haha good instinct! The real story is actually pretty interesting though. You’re right that just declaring yourself “king” would have been pretty cringe. But basically 王 as a surname doesn’t come from people claiming to be kings. It comes from people who were descended from kings, and adopted 王 specifically to commemorate that royal lineage after the dynasty had already fallen. So it’s less like “I’m a king” and more “my ancestors were.”

      Now for the whole Wang origin story, Chinese sources generally trace 王 to four main origins:

      1. 姬姓 (Jī), the Zhou dynasty royal family. This is the biggest source by far, around 90% of Wangs with genealogical records. The accepted founder is 太子晋 Tàizǐ Jìn, son of King Ling of Zhou (around 545 BC), who got demoted to commoner for too-direct criticism of his father. His son 宗敬 stayed on as a government official, and people kept calling the family 王家, “the royal household.” The name stuck. Their descendants became the famous 琅琊王氏 and 太原王氏, the two most prestigious Wang clans in Chinese history.

      2. 子姓 (Zǐ), the Shang dynasty royal family. Descendants of 比干 Bǐ Gān, uncle of the last Shang king, who was killed around 1046 BC for repeatedly speaking out against the tyrannical King Zhou. His descendants took 王 because their ancestor was a 王子 (royal prince). About 3,100 years old.

      3. 妫姓 (Guī), descendants of Emperor Shun. When the state of Qi fell to Qin in 221 BC, descendants of King 田建 took 王 in memory of their royal status.

      4. 少数民族改姓, ethnic minorities sinicizing. Over the centuries, many non-Han groups (Xianbei, Manchu, Mongol, and others) adopted 王 when they assimilated into Han culture.

      So the pattern is pretty consistent across every origin story: 王 was a memorial badge for fallen royal lines. That’s why it didn’t read as posturing or try hard. It probably read as a quiet flex of family pedigree.

      Bonus on the character itself: 王 is three horizontal strokes representing 天 (heaven), 人 (humanity), and 地 (earth), connected by a single vertical stroke, the ruler who unifies all three.

      Today there are around 100 million 王s in China, which is basically a 3,000-year accumulation of royal descendants. Pretty crazy haha…

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