可 (kè): khan

Meanings

1 khan

Characters

可

kè

khan

Examples

成吉思汗是蒙古帝国的首位大可汗。

Chéngjísīhán shì Měnggǔ dìguó de shǒuwèi dà kèhán.

Genghis Khan was the first Great Khan of the Mongol Empire.

可汗制度在回纥等北方民族中广泛存在。

Kèhán zhìdù zài Huíhé děng běifāng mínzú zhōng guǎngfàn cúnzài.

The khan system existed widely among northern peoples such as the Uyghurs.

Tips

register

This reading is essentially a one-compound exception. 可 only surfaces in 可汗 (khan) — a transliteration of the Mongol/Turkic ruler title that needed a flatter syllable than kě. Outside that one word, always read 可.

culture

可汗 shows up in the Ballad of 木兰 — "可汗大点兵" (the Khan musters a great army) — and was used for rulers of the Xiongnu, Rouran, Göktürk and Mongol steppe empires, including 成吉思汗 (Genghis Khan).

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Mouth radical inside the hook — still the indexing radical. The kè reading is a foreign-name reading borrowed phonetically: when transliterating the steppe title "khan" into Chinese, the smoother kè syllable was chosen, but the written form of 可 is identical to the everyday 可.

phonetic

丁 dīng

nail; man (graphic skeleton here)

Same graphic skeleton as in the kě reading — the top stroke and curving hook outline a 丁-shape that frames the mouth below. The kè reading reuses the entire character form unchanged; only the syllable shifts to fit the foreign loanword 可汗.