Don't confuse 侯 (marquis) with 候 (to wait). 候 has an extra vertical stroke down the middle. A memory hook: the marquis 侯 doesn't wait 候.
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侯 was the second-highest rank in ancient China's five-tier peerage: 公侯伯子男 (duke, marquis, earl, viscount, baron). A fourth-tone hòu survives only in the Fujian place name 闽侯.
Person radical on the left, the side-form of 人. It files 侯 in the human-role family with 仕 (official) and 候 (to wait). The radical points to a social rank held by a person, the marquis sense.
Right side is a seven-stroke contracted form of the rarer standalone 矦, an archaic graph showing an arrow striking a cloth target. The image was 'one who shoots well enough to be enfeoffed', supplying both the hóu sound and the noble-archer overtone behind 侯.
