A short story about the origin of Chinese characters.

Liu's earliest birthplace is in today's Tang County, Hebei Province. This is the place where the descendants of the ancient Liu family held high their giant axes and bravely conquered the ancient life and life of nature with totems. Liu's surname is "the king's weather", and the Liu Han dynasty constituted the first climax of Chinese civilization. Since then, the main body of the Chinese nation has been called Han Chinese and Han Chinese, and the spoken and written languages in China have been called Chinese and Chinese characters. God knows Liu too well. He handed the burden of laying the foundation of Chinese civilization to his descendants. Hold the axe high-Liu's original rootstock tree has roots and water is active.

As the fourth largest surname in China, where is the root and source of Liu? Although there is a saying in China that "Li Zhaoliu is everywhere", if you ask others what "Liu" means, I'm afraid people nowadays, even Liu's people, rarely can give you a definite answer!

So what does the word "Liu" mean when it is low? With the help of the keys of ancient philology and modern etymology in China, we can trace the origin of the word "Liu". Liu Ziyuan often said, "Liu's surname, Liu" when people introduced Liu's surname. This is what people see today, representing tens of millions of people surnamed Liu in the Chinese world.

In fact, what you see now is only the modern simplified Chinese characters of Chinese mainland and Singapore. Seeing this, we will understand that to explore the original image and the earliest meaning of the word "Liu", we should not only look at simplified characters, but also look at the traditional Chinese character "Liu". The oldest known Chinese characters in China are Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jinwen. Unfortunately, we didn't find the word "Liu" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Jinwen and Wen Tao. Surprisingly, the famous national surname of Zuowei Liu at that time was not found in the earliest dictionary in China-Shuo Wen Jie Zi by Xu Shen, a master of philology in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Some people think this is because of taboo.

The oldest existing "Liu" is Xiao Zhuanhe of Han Dynasty. Tomahawk-the original meaning of the word Liu Yi In modern Chinese, the word "Liu" has no other meaning except as a surname. So few people can explain what Liu means. In fact, in ancient Chinese, the word "Liu" has an extremely rich and magical meaning. According to the statistics of the most authoritative Chinese dictionaries in the world, such as Etymology, Chinese Dictionary and Chinese Dictionary, the word "Liu" had as many different meanings and interpretations as 1 1 in ancient times. One is nouns, weapons such as axes and cymbals. Guangya: "Liu, Daoye". "Orthography Channel Department" also explains: "Liu is a genus". Second, the verb, kill, kill. "Er Ya Shi Gu Shang" said: "Liu, kill also". Third, the verb, gram, conquer. Er Ya Shi Gu Shang also said: "Liu, Ke Ye". Fourth, verbs, Chen and Chen. Er Ya Shi Gu Shang also said: "Liu, Chen Ye". V. Verb, wither. The Chinese dictionary says, "Liu, the branches and leaves of trees are sparse and uneven." 6. Noun refers to a fruit tree, also called "Liuzi". Er Ya Shi Mu says: "Liu, Liu". Guo Pu commented: "Liuzi, born in the mountains, is as real as a pear, sweet and hard, spanning his toes." Seven, adjectives, through "Liu", "Liu", beautiful appearance. Eight, through the "clear" and return. "The Original Road of Huainanzi": "Liu Lan is partial, arguing all." Gaoyou commented: "Liu Lan, look back." Nine, it is common with the word "sm". Ji Yun and Bell or Willow. Ten, the place name, "Zuo Zhuan Eleven Years Hidden Tribute" records: "Take Wu Liu ...". This is the place name, near Zhengzhou, Henan Province today. XI。 According to "Notes on Water Classics and Luoshui", the name of this river is "Heshui North Liu Shui".

Among so many meanings, which one is the most primitive and fundamental meaning of the word "Liu"? At the beginning, people used the word "Liu" as their blood relationship. What was the meaning of Liu's emblem? Surname experts believe that the most primitive surnames often come from the totem worship of the most primitive tribal peoples. Therefore, as a surname, the meaning of Chinese characters as a surname is the most primitive and fundamental meaning of the word, which often refers to a specific thing or object.