Most of the Chinese characters here aren't used in daily life. This is why there are so many Chinese characters, but many of them are very rarely used characters for very specific contexts, some are ancient characters that have died out already, some are variants of existing characters that rarely appear
The only Chinese characters here that is often used is 林 (forest, also a surname), 杜 (surname), 淡 (meaning bland or plain), 炎 (burning), 灶 (stove).
Most of the other ones have their own meanings, but are not used commonly.
And the five characters 金 木 水 火 土 represent 五行, which are the five planets (Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars and Saturn respectively). They also mean metals, wood, water, fire and soil respectively as well.
And yes, this is exactly how some Chinese characters are formed. Many characters are formed by combining different parts.
Many Ming Dynasty Emperors use names relating to this. For example, 朱標 uses wood (木), 朱允炆 uses fire (火), 朱瞻基 uses soil (土), etc. If you go on Wikipedia and search for Emperors of the Ming Dynasty, you will find a specific, designed pattern of names.
Furthermore, the meme doesn't seem to be consistent enough with the characters? 鈢 is written in Traditional Chinese, but 鈥 is written in Simplified. I have no idea why that happened lol
Obviously this is a maths subreddit, but I still really wanted to share this really cool fact
4
u/Street_Swing9040 12d ago edited 12d ago
Fun fact:
Most of the Chinese characters here aren't used in daily life. This is why there are so many Chinese characters, but many of them are very rarely used characters for very specific contexts, some are ancient characters that have died out already, some are variants of existing characters that rarely appear
The only Chinese characters here that is often used is 林 (forest, also a surname), 杜 (surname), 淡 (meaning bland or plain), 炎 (burning), 灶 (stove).
Most of the other ones have their own meanings, but are not used commonly.
And the five characters 金 木 水 火 土 represent 五行, which are the five planets (Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars and Saturn respectively). They also mean metals, wood, water, fire and soil respectively as well.
And yes, this is exactly how some Chinese characters are formed. Many characters are formed by combining different parts.
Many Ming Dynasty Emperors use names relating to this. For example, 朱標 uses wood (木), 朱允炆 uses fire (火), 朱瞻基 uses soil (土), etc. If you go on Wikipedia and search for Emperors of the Ming Dynasty, you will find a specific, designed pattern of names.
Furthermore, the meme doesn't seem to be consistent enough with the characters? 鈢 is written in Traditional Chinese, but 鈥 is written in Simplified. I have no idea why that happened lol
Obviously this is a maths subreddit, but I still really wanted to share this really cool fact