子 (zǐ) · son; child

Meanings

1 son; child
2 seed; egg; small thing
3 1st earthly branch (11pm-1am; midnight; year of the rat)
4 viscount (4th of five Chinese noble ranks)
5 subsidiary; sub-

Characters

子

zǐ

son; child; seed; master

Examples

HSK 2

我是家里的长子。

Wǒ shì jiālǐ de zhǎngzǐ.

I am the eldest son in the family.

HSK 6

莲子和瓜子是常见的中国零食。

Liánzǐ hé guāzǐ shì chángjiàn de Zhōngguó língshí.

Lotus seeds and melon seeds are common Chinese snacks.

HSK 7-9

孔子是中国古代的大思想家。

Kǒngzǐ shì Zhōngguó gǔdài de dà sīxiǎngjiā.

Confucius was a great Chinese thinker.

Tips

mistakes

子 has two readings. Full third tone zǐ keeps its lexical meaning (son/child/seed/master/viscount) - used in compounds like 子女, 孔子, 原子, 瓜子. The toneless zi is purely a noun-forming suffix with no meaning of its own - 椅子, 桌子, 孩子. Rough rule: if the compound still 'means child/seed/scholar', it is zǐ; if 子 is just rounding out a one-syllable root into a noun, it is zi.

history

In Classical Chinese 子 was an honorific 'Master' attached to a teacher's surname: 孔子 (Confucius), 老子 (Laozi), 孟子 (Mencius), 庄子 (Zhuangzi). These are always third-tone zǐ. The same character is also the first of the twelve earthly branches and labels the rat year and the midnight hour (11pm-1am).

Components

pictograph

子 zǐ

child; son

Three-stroke 子 is itself Kangxi radical #39 and not further decomposable. The oracle-bone graph depicts a swaddled infant with arms outstretched and the lower body wrapped - head, arms, and bundled body in three brushstrokes. From 'baby' the meaning broadened to 'child', 'son', 'descendant', then the honorific 'master' (used after a thinker's surname), and finally the toneless noun-suffix that turns one-syllable roots into nouns (椅子 chair, 桌子 table).

Radical

Child Kangxi #39

Highly productive radical for characters dealing with children, kinship, and generations: 字 (character), 孔 (hole), 孕 (pregnant), 孙 (grandchild), 学 (study), 季 (season), 孤 (orphan), 孩 (child). The graph is a pictograph of a wrapped infant - head, swaddled body, arms not yet visible. Usually sits below or to the left in compounds.