亿 (yì): 100 million

Meanings

1 100 million

Characters

亿

yì

hundred million

Examples

中国有十四亿人口。

Zhōngguó yǒu shísì yì rénkǒu.

China has 1.4 billion people.

这个项目花了两亿。

Zhège xiàngmù huā le liǎng yì.

This project cost 200 million.

全世界有八十亿人。

Quánshìjiè yǒu bāshí yì rén.

There are 8 billion people in the world.

Tips

mistakes

Chinese counting goes: 万 (10,000) → 亿 (100,000,000). There is no single word for 'million' — it's 百万 (100 万).

usage

十亿 = 1 billion. Chinese groups numbers by 万 (10K), not by thousands like English.

Components

radical

亻 rén

person (radical form)

Left person radical — the indexing component. Inherited from traditional 億, where the original meant 'a great number of people'. The radical positions 亿 alongside other counting-and-people characters (们, 仁, 何, 你). The semantic of 'person' is preserved even though the right side has been radically simplified.

phonetic

乙 yǐ

second heavenly stem (here phonetic)

Right 乙 supplies the sound (yǐ → yì, only tone differs). The 1956 reform shrank the traditional phonetic 意 (yì, 13 strokes) down to a single stroke 乙 — a heavily reduced cursive stand-in. Pure sound placeholder with no semantic load.