Meaning & readings
silver
On’yomi ギン
Kun’yomi しろがね
Nanori うん、かな、かね
Origin
Silver is a metal, so this character uses the metal radical 金 on the left to signal that meaning. The right component 艮 acts as a sound hint, telling you roughly how to pronounce the character — it suggests the "gin" sound. By combining a meaning component (the metal classifier) with a sound hint, the character tells you both what silver is and how to say its name.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 金
- 艮
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 14
- Kangxi radical
- 167
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #395 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+09280