Yān / yàn
proper noun #15,269

Meanings

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

Examples

HSK 5
Yān lǎoshī shì wǒmen de bānzhǔrèn.
Teacher Yan is our homeroom teacher.
HSK 6
Yān guó shì Zhànguó Qī xióng zhīyī.
The State of Yan was one of the Seven Warring States.
HSK 6
Běijīng zài gǔdài jiào Yānjīng.
In ancient times Beijing was called Yanjing.

Tips

history
Read Yān, the character names a Zhou vassal state covering what is now northern Hebei and western Liaoning, with its capital on the site of modern 北京. Qin destroyed it in 222 BCE, but the name survives in 燕京, 燕山, and in the pairing , a literary byword for the north and its hard-bitten heroes.
usage
The reading tracks the meaning with no exceptions: anything historical or geographical is Yān (the state, the surname, 燕山, 燕京), while the bird and everything named after it is yàn (燕子, 燕窝, 燕尾服).

Components

radical
huǒ
fire (bottom-form variant)
Bottom - the four-dot bottom form of , 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 share an indexing radical with cooking characters like and . 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 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
kǒu
mouth; opening
Middle - not a literal mouth here, but the stylised body of the swallow seen from below. The whole top stack 廿+ 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
běi
north; back-to-back figures
Middle-bottom - depicting the swallow's two outstretched wings, beating away from the body. is itself a pictograph of two people back-to-back; reused here purely for its winged shape, a happy coincidence between two unrelated graphs.

Stroke Order

Yān