曹

Bottom is the indexing radical 曰 'to speak' — visually identical to 日 sun in print but with a looser middle stroke. In 曹 it marks the original courtroom scene of two parties pleading their case before a judge. Today 曹 is overwhelmingly a surname (most famously Cao Cao 曹操 of the Three Kingdoms).

Top seven strokes are a fused shape with no clean modern standalone — historically two paired bundles or two figures standing before a judge, giving 曹 its earliest sense of paired legal parties, then by extension 'group, cohort, office division'. Best read as a single graphic unit; the canonical CJK pieces don't decompose it cleanly.