光 (gwong1)

This week’s character is 光 (gwong1) which means “light”.

I love the origins of this character, which has two components:

• the top component is 火 (fo2) for “fire”, and
• the bottom component is 儿 (jan4), an old way of writing 人 (jan4) which means “person”.

So there is “light” when a person carries fire!