Radical 212

龍
Radical 212 (U+2FD3)
龍 (U+9F8D) "dragon"
Pronunciations
Pinyin:	lóng
Bopomofo:	ㄌㄨㄥˊ
Wade–Giles:	lung2
Cantonese Yale:	lung4
Jyutping:	lung4
Japanese Kana:	リョー ・リュー ryō, ryū たつ tatsu
Sino-Korean:	룡 ryong
Names
Japanese name(s):	竜 ryū
Hangul:	용 yong
Stroke order animation

Radical 212, 龍, 龙, or 竜 meaning "dragon" (龍部), is one of the two of the 214 Kangxi radicals that are composed of 16 strokes. The character arose as a stylized drawing of a Chinese dragon, and refers to a version of the dragon in each East Asian culture:

• Chinese dragon, Lóng in Chinese
• Japanese dragon, Ryū or Tatsu in Japanese
• Korean dragon, Ryong or Yong in Korean
• Vietnamese dragon, Rồng in Vietnamese or Long in Sino-Vietnamese

It may also refer to the Dragon as it appears in the Chinese zodiac. It is also a common surname.

In the Kangxi Dictionary 14 characters (out of 40,000) are under this radical.

It occurs as a phonetic complement in some fairly common Chinese characters, for example 聾 = "deaf", which is composed of 龍 "dragon" and the "ear" 耳 radical, "a word with meaning related to ears and pronounced similarly to 龍: "dragon gives sound, ear gives meaning".

Evolution

• 
  Shang dynasty Oracle bone script
• 
  Shang dynasty Bronze script
• 
  Western Zhou oracle script
• 
  Western Zhou Bronze script
• 
  Spring and Autumn period bronze script
• 
  Warring States period bronze script
• 
  Chu slip and silk script
• 
  Qin slip script
• 
  Large seal script character
• 
  Small seal script character
• 
  Han dynasty Clerical script
• 
  Qing dynasty Clerical script

Characters with Radical 212

strokes	character
+0	龍
+2	龎
+3	龏 龐
+4	龑
+5	龒
+6	龓 龔 龕
+16	龖
+17	龗
+32	龘
+48	𪚥

Main article: wikt:Wiktionary:Chinese radical index 龍

Literature

• Fazzioli, Edoardo (1987). Chinese calligraphy : from pictograph to ideogram : the history of 214 essential Chinese/Japanese characters. calligraphy by Rebecca Hon Ko. New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN 0-89659-774-1.
• Leyi Li: "Tracing the Roots of Chinese Characters: 500 Cases". Beijing 1993, ISBN 978-7-5619-0204-2

External links

• Unihan Database - U+9F8D