人 (rén): Person

Frequency:  

• Spoken: 24th (0.61%)
  
• Written: 7th (0.97%)
  

KangXi Radical: 人, 亻, #9

• 794 derived characters (1.98%)
  

Our first word is the Chinese for man or person. In addition to meaning an individual, it can be used like the traditional English term, man, meaning mankind or humanity. 人 is also used with a place name to indicate a person’s origin. For example, America-人 means an American.

This character can be combined with others to form many words. Some examples include work-人, worker; 人-work, manpower; 人-mouth, population; 人人, everybody; male-人 and female-人, man and woman; big-人, grown-up.

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Oracle Bone 人

Seal Script 人

Etymology

As you may guess, this word is very ancient and common. By the time of Oracle Bone inscriptions, 人 was standardized as the profile view of a man standing with arms slightly extended. This form still occurs as the “standing man” radical, which we’ll encounter in future characters. 

During the time of Seal Script, the strokes were extended in order to fill the required rectangular space. This was later simplified into the modern form where the two strokes are about equal in size.

Varieties of 人

Beware Similar Characters

This character can be easily confused with three others. Take care to distinguish it from 入 (enter) where the second stroke extends above and to the left of the first and 八 (eight) and 儿 (child) where the two strokes are slightly separated. The latter’s right hand stroke is also closer to a 90 degree angle.