Radical 212

龍
Radical 212 (U+2FD3)
龍 (U+9F8D) "dragon"
Pinyin:	lóng
Bopomofo:	ㄌㄨㄥˊ
Wade–Giles:	lung2
Jyutping:	lung4
Cantonese Yale:	lung4
Hiragana:	リョウ ・リュウ ryō, ryū たつ tatsu
Kanji:	竜 ryū
Hangul:	용 yong
Sino-Korean:	룡 ryong

seal script of radical 212

Radical 212, 龍, 龙, or 竜 meaning "dragon", is one of only two of the 214 Kangxi radicals that are composed of 16 strokes. The character arose as a stylized drawing of a Chinese dragon, and refers to a version of the dragon in each East Asian culture:

• Chinese dragon, Lóng in Chinese
• Japanese dragon, Ryū or Tatsu in Japanese
• Korean dragon, Ryong or Yong in Korean
• Vietnamese dragon, Rồng in Vietnamese

It may also refer to the dragon as it appears in the Chinese zodiac. It is used as the symbol for Tatsu, a roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain, in California.

In the Kangxi Dictionary there are only 14 characters (out of 40,000) to be found under this radical.

It occurs as a phonetic complement in some fairly common Chinese characters, for example 聾 = "deaf", which is composed of 龍 "dragon" and the "ear" 耳 radical, 耳, pronounced similarly to 龍: "dragon gives sound, ear gives meaning".

Characters with Radical 212

strokes	character
without additional strokes	龍
2 additional strokes	龎
3 additional strokes	龏龐龘
4 additional strokes	龑
5 additional strokes	龒
6 additional strokes	龓龔龕
16 additional strokes	龖
9 additional strokes	龗

Literature

• Fazzioli, Edoardo. Chinese calligraphy : from pictograph to ideogram : the history of 214 essential Chinese/Japanese characters. calligraphy by Rebecca Hon Ko. New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN 0896597741. 
• Leyi Li: “Tracing the Roots of Chinese Characters: 500 Cases”. Beijing 1993, ISBN 978-7561902042

External links

• Unihan Database - U+9F8D