Meaning & readings
fish
On’yomi ギョ
Kun’yomi うお、さかな、-ざかな
Nanori い
Origin
This character is a picture of a fish. The strokes show the head and body of the fish on the left, with fins and a tail on the right. Over time, the shape became more stylized and geometric, but it still represents the basic outline of a fish swimming. Because fish were important to people in ancient China and Japan, this pictograph became the standard way to write the word for fish, and it's still used as a classifier radical in many characters related to water creatures.
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 (魚).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 195
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1208 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 4
- Unicode
- U+09B5A