Meaning & readings
call, call out to, invite
On’yomi コ
Kun’yomi よ.ぶ
Nanori よぶ
Origin
The character 呼 combines the mouth radical 口 on the left, which represents speech and vocal sounds, with the component 乎 on the right that serves as a sound hint for pronunciation. Since calling out and inviting are things you do with your mouth and voice, the mouth radical makes sense as the meaningful part. The right component 乎 doesn't contribute a meaning of its own but tells you roughly how the character should sound when spoken. Together, the visual idea of "mouth" paired with this phonetic guide created a character that means to call out or invite someone.
Components
- 口
- 乎
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 30
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #498 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0547C