Meaning & readings
oneself
On’yomi ジ、シ
Kun’yomi みずか.ら、おの.ずから、おの.ずと
Nanori より
Origin
The character 自 appears to be a pictograph of a human nose or face in profile. In ancient Chinese, the nose was used as a symbol for "self" or "oneself" — perhaps because the nose is the most prominent and personal part of your own face, the part you naturally think of as distinctly yours. Over time, the picture was simplified into the rectangular shape we see today, but the meaning of "self" stuck around. This is why the character carries meanings like "oneself" and "naturally" in modern Japanese.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Pictographic or simple.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (自).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 6
- Kangxi radical
- 132
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #19 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+081EA