Meaning & readings
night, evening
On’yomi ヤ
Kun’yomi よ、よる
Origin
This character appears to be a pictograph showing a person in darkness. The left side represents a figure or person, while the right side originally depicted night or darkness—perhaps clouds or the absence of light. Over time, the picture simplified into the strokes we see today, but the basic idea remained: a person in the nighttime. That visual connection between the human form and the darkness of night led to the character meaning "night" or "evening."
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (夜).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 36
- Formation type
- Pictographic or simple
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #487 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+0591C