爷

Top 父 - hand holding a stone axe, the original picture of the head of household. As indexing radical it places 爷 in the kinship-elder family. The traditional 爺 has the same 父 on top with a fuller phonetic below; the simplified form keeps the 'patriarchal' marker intact.

Bottom 卩 - historically a kneeling figure, here serving as the simplified stand-in for the traditional 耶 phonetic that gave the yé sound. The full 爺 used 耶 below; PRC reform replaced it with the much smaller 卩. Treat the bottom as a phonetic placeholder rather than reading 'kneeling' into the meaning.