嗣 (sì): heir

Meanings

1 heir
2 successor
3 to inherit
4 to continue (a tradition)

Characters

嗣

sì

heir; to succeed; to inherit

Examples

HSK 5

他没有子嗣，财产无人继承。

Tā méiyǒu zǐsì, cáichǎn wúrén jìchéng.

He had no heirs, and his estate had no one to inherit it.

HSK 7-9

古代帝王非常重视立嗣问题。

Gǔdài dìwáng fēicháng zhòngshì lì sì wèntí.

Ancient emperors placed great importance on the matter of establishing an heir.

Tips

register

嗣 is a classical/literary term rarely used in everyday modern speech. It most commonly appears in historical texts, legal documents about inheritance, or compound words like 子嗣 (heirs/offspring).

memory

The character combines 司 (to manage/oversee) and 冊 (records/scrolls) - the one who manages the family records is the designated heir.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Mouth radical sits in the upper left as the indexing radical - here it stands for the spoken proclamation by which an heir is named. In the ancestor-hall ritual that gave 嗣 its meaning, the head of the family declared the successor aloud, and 口 marks that declaration.

semantic

冊 cè

register; volume

Middle 冊 - a pictograph of bound bamboo slips, the ancient form of a written register. In 嗣 it represents the official record of lineage, the document that fixes who inherits. The combination of mouth and register reads as 'spoken-and-written succession.'

phonetic

司 sī

to manage; to oversee

Right 司 supplies the sound - sī shifting to sì with a tone change - and adds meaning: 司 means 'to take charge of, to administer.' The full character paints succession as a managed handover, with the heir formally entrusted to oversee the family line.