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华

華
huà / huá
noun #3,908

Meanings

  1. 1 Mount Hua (in Shaanxi)
  2. 2 (surname) Hua

Examples

华山是五岳之一。
Huàshān shì Wǔyuè zhī yī.
Mount Hua is one of the Five Sacred Mountains.
华佗是东汉著名的医生。
Huà Tuó shì Dōnghàn zhùmíng de yīshēng.
Hua Tuo was a famous Eastern Han dynasty physician.
数学家华罗庚为中国数论奠基。
Shùxuéjiā Huà Luógēng wèi Zhōngguó shùlùn diànjī.
The mathematician Hua Luogeng laid the foundations of number theory in China.

Tips

usage
The huà reading is restricted to two narrow uses: the mountain 华山 (western peak of the Five Sacred Mountains, in Shaanxi) and the surname Huà — most famously the Eastern Han physician 华佗 (c. 145–208), considered the father of Chinese surgery, and the 20th-century mathematician 华罗庚 (1910–1985).
mistakes
Default to huá unless the word is the mountain or a surname. Common Han-era PRC names like 建华 ('build China') are personal names using the huá reading, not the surname huà. The surname huà only attaches in front of a given name, as in 华佗 — the same character, opposite role.

Components

radical
十 shí
ten (here a graphic residue)
Bottom radical 十 in 华 is a graphic stand-in inherited from the simplification, not the literal 'ten'. The original 華 had a complex grass-and-hanging stack at the bottom; the 1956 reform clipped it to a simple 十-shaped vertical-plus-horizontal silhouette. As indexing radical, 十 serves as the lookup key without carrying a 'ten' meaning here.
phonetic
化 huà
to change; transform
Top phonetic 化 supplies the sound — huà shifted to huá by tone change only. Heavily simplified from traditional 華, which depicted flowers blossoming on a tree — the modern 化-on-top is a stylised replacement that preserves the sound while shedding the floral image.

Stroke Order

华 huà