Yuè 月
The character for ‘moon’ and ‘month’, and radical 74 of the 214 Kangxi radicals.
Meaning
Unihan defines 月 as ‘moon; month’. 期 ‘period of time; date; time limit’ and 朝 ‘dynasty; morning’ are filed under it. Mandarin reads it yuè; Japanese, tsuki.
Origin and history
Wieger read the character as “The moon’s crescent, completely visible”, and called it the radical “of characters relating to the moon”.
The moon and the flesh radical
Not every 月 in a character is the moon. 肝 ‘liver’ is filed under radical 130, 肉 ‘flesh; meat’, with three strokes more. In compounds the flesh radical takes a narrow form that, Wieger wrote, “is easily confounded with” the moon. He read 肉 as strips of dry meat, “now, meat in general”, the radical of “a large group of characters relating to meat and food”.
Read next
- Next in Chinese radicalsYǔ 雨The character for ‘rain’, and radical 173 of the 214 Kangxi radicals, under which characters for snow, thunder and other weather are filed.
- The same shape in Tarot cardsAce of PentaclesThe ace of pentacles in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a hand from a cloud holding up a pentacle. A. E. Waite read it as perfect contentment, felicity and gold.
See also
Rì 日, Rén 人, Nǚ 女, Zǐ 子, Kǒu 口, Xīn 心.
Sources
- Unihan data for U+6708, Unicode Han Database (Unihan), Unicode Consortium, kRSUnicode; kTotalStrokes; kDefinition; kMandarin; kJapaneseKun
- Unihan data for U+671F, Unicode Han Database (Unihan), Unicode Consortium, kRSUnicode; kDefinition
- Unihan data for U+671D, Unicode Han Database (Unihan), Unicode Consortium, kRSUnicode; kDefinition
- Unihan data for U+8089, Unicode Han Database (Unihan), Unicode Consortium, kRSUnicode; kTotalStrokes; kDefinition
- Unihan data for U+809D, Unicode Han Database (Unihan), Unicode Consortium, kRSUnicode; kDefinition
- The Unicode Standard, chapter 18 (Han), The Unicode Standard, Version 16.0, Chapter 18: East Asia, Unicode Consortium, 18.1.8 Radical-Stroke Indices; 18.1.14 Kangxi Radicals and CJK Radicals Supplement
- Chinese Characters (Léon Wieger, 1927), Léon Wieger, Chinese Characters: Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification and Signification, translated by L. Davrout, second edition (1927), Catholic Mission Press, Hsien-hsien (Internet Archive full text), Lessons 64 G and 65 A
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from letters and numbers or squares and rectangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
Added .