Meaning & readings
country
On’yomi コク
Kun’yomi くに
Nanori くな、こ
Origin
The character 国 pictures a bordered area or enclosed space, shown by the square frame that surrounds the center. The component 玉 in the middle acts as a sound hint for the pronunciation, not as part of the meaning. Together, the enclosing frame came to represent the idea of a defined territory or nation — a country is, after all, land enclosed within borders. The square-within-square structure reinforces this sense of a bounded, organized domain.
Components
- 囗
- 玉
- 囗
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
- 31
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #3 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 4
- Unicode
- U+056FD