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Analysis and history of 宛

❇
宛 ate (suffix) addressed to
宛先 atesaki address; destination
宛名 atena name (and address) of recipient

Consists of house/roof 宀 and 夗, which according to some scholars may have lent its sound and a certain connotation (interpretations vary).¹ In its modern form 夗 can be analysed as night/moon 夕 and bent body 卩/㔾. However, it looked differently at an earlier stage, perhaps representing a person lowering the head.² Scholars disagree about the original meaning of 宛 (hemispherical roof and turn in one’s sleep are two suggestions).³ In classical Chinese 宛 was loaned to write a word with meanings pliant, supple; yielding. In Japanese it also came to be used for ate, specifically in the meaning addressed to. For this usage 宛 was probably also loaned⁴, but one scholar could imagine a derivation from the older meaning yielding.⁵ Suggest to take 宀 simply as house, 夕 as night and 㔾 as curved up body.

Mnemonic: Your address is the house where you curve up in bed at night

The layout of the box above follows the style of an entry in Henshall’s 1988 book.
1. Seeley et al., p. 308.
2. Ochiai, 2016, p. 504.
3. Seeley et al., ibid.; Henshall, p. 622.
4. Seeley et al., ibid.
5. Henshall, ibid. The connection seems somewhat fanciful (“to yield to” ＞ “to address to”).

Verbose explanation and references

The original function of 宛 (or its likely phonetic 夗 for that matter) is unknown.


Most scholars think that 㔾 in 宛 depicts a bending person. Ochiai suggests that the oracle bone shape depicts a person with its head hanging down (see the two oracle bone impressions to the right) and only later the exaggerated head was separated and redrawn as night/moon 夕, and the person as bending person. As often a lot of confusing variants have been found, among them bronze graphs that show meat 月/肉 instead of night/moon 夕.

Scholars trying to get at the original meaning of 夗 have suggested bend the body, fall down, turn in one’s sleep. For 宛 they have suggested hemispherical roof, again bend the body and again turn in one’s sleep (the latter takes 宛 as “an embellished variant of 夗”).

宛 was loaned to write other words later on. In classical Chinese it pointed to a word “pliant, supple; yielding.” In Japanese there still exists enten 宛転/宛轉 (a compound borrowed from classical Chinese) with meanings like “eloquent; fluent; smooth-spoken” and “nicely shaped eyebrows.” The word enzen 宛然 (“as if; the very thing itself”) comes from an another expression in Chinese that 宛 was used to write for.

In Japanese one is most likely to see the graph 宛 being used to write ate, in its meaning “address; addressed to.” Henshall suggests that the meaning “addressed to” could be a derivation from the meaning “yield to”).

In Japanese 宛 is also used to write the expression ateji 宛て字 (more commenly spelled 当て字). The term ateji refers mainly to using characters for only their phonetic value (like a loan graph in Chinese; as mentioned 宛 itself is a loangraph in Chinese). A well known example is the spelling of sushi with 寿司. Conversely, ateji can also refer to characters used for only their meaning, as in 零 for the English word “zero”.

For its modern Japanese meaning of “address” 宛 can be reinterpreted to make more sense. The element house/roof 宀 has obvious relevance for “address”. Further, there is someone at home (curved up 卩/㔾 in bed at night 夕 ?). Subsequently a mnemonic could be: your address is the home 宀 where you curve up 㔾 in bed at night 夕.

References

First published: Thursday 13 April 2017
Modified: Friday 25 October 2024

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