甸 (diàn): suburbs; outskirts (classical)

Meanings

1 suburbs; outskirts (classical)
2 outlying royal lands (in ancient Chinese geography)
3 common element in northern Chinese place names

Characters

甸

diàn

suburbs, outlying lands

Examples

HSK 3

他在北京海甸区长大。

Tā zài Běijīng Hǎidiàn qū zhǎngdà.

He grew up in Haidian, Beijing.

HSK 7-9

缅甸位于中国的西南方。

Miǎndiàn wèiyú Zhōngguó de xīnán fāng.

Myanmar is to the southwest of China.

HSK 7-9

桦甸是吉林省的一个县级市。

Huàdiàn shì Jílín Shěng de yí ge xiànjíshì.

Huadian is a county-level city in Jilin Province.

Tips

culture

Today the meaning survives mainly in place names: 海甸 (in Haikou), 桦甸 (in Jilin), and crucially 缅甸 (Myanmar/Burma) where it forms part of the country name.

Components

radical

田 tián

field (radical)

Field radical inside the wrap - the indexing radical. Pictures a plot of land divided by paths, the canonical image of agriculture. In 甸 it ties the character to land/territory vocabulary alongside 町, 畔, 略, and underlies the modern use of 甸 as a suffix in northern Chinese place names.

semantic

勹 bāo

wrap radical

Outer wrap radical hooking around the top-right - pictures a body bent over something it embraces. Here it encloses 田 (field), suggesting the cultivated land wrapped under royal authority. Classical 甸 named the outer royal domains beyond the capital, fields under the king's reach.