燕 (yàn): swallow (bird)

Measure Word

一只燕 zhī

Meanings

1 swallow (bird)
2 Yan (ancient vassal state in present-day Hebei/Liaoning)
3 a surname

Characters

燕

yàn

swallow (bird)

Examples

春天来了，燕子飞回来了。

Chūntiān lái le, yànzi fēi huílái le.

Spring is here, the swallows have flown back.

燕国是战国七雄之一。

Yān guó shì Zhànguó Qī xióng zhīyī.

The State of Yan was one of the Seven Warring States.

Tips

mistakes

燕 has two pronunciations: yàn (swallow bird) and Yān (the ancient state and surname). 燕子 (yànzi, swallow) vs 燕国 (Yān guó, State of Yan).

culture

Swallows nesting under the eaves is a traditional symbol of good fortune in Chinese culture. The return of swallows marks the arrival of spring.

Components

radical

灬 huǒ

fire (bottom-form variant)

Bottom 灬 — the four-dot bottom form of 火, but here it isn't fire at all. The dots are a graphic substitute for the swallow's forked tail feathers, an accidental homophony of shape that lets 燕 share an indexing radical with cooking characters like 煮 and 蒸. Etymologically the dots are tail; positionally they index as the fire radical.

pictograph

廿 niàn

twenty; flat shape (here pictographic head)

Top 廿 — visually the number twenty, but in 燕 it has nothing to do with counting. It is a graphic stand-in for the swallow's small flat head and pointed beak, the topmost slice of the original bird pictograph that gave rise to the modern character.

pictograph

口 kǒu

mouth; opening

Middle 口 — not a literal mouth here, but the stylised body of the swallow seen from below. The whole top stack 廿+口 traces the bird's head and belly fused into one silhouette; the original oracle-bone graph showed a swallow in flight with wings spread.

pictograph

北 běi

north; back-to-back figures

Middle-bottom 北 — depicting the swallow's two outstretched wings, beating away from the body. 北 is itself a pictograph of two people back-to-back; reused here purely for its winged shape, a happy coincidence between two unrelated graphs.