Radical 212
traditional Chinese radical dragon (U+2FD3)
Radical 212, 龍, 龙, or 竜 meaning "dragon" (龍部), is one of the 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 or Long in Sino-Vietnamese
It may also refer to the Dragon as it appears in the Chinese zodiac. It is also a common surname.
In the Kangxi Dictionary 14 characters (out of 40,000) are 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, "a word with meaning related to ears and pronounced similarly to 龍: "dragon gives sound, ear gives meaning".
Evolution
Characters with Radical 212
Literature
Fazzioli, Edoardo (1987). Chinese calligraphy : from pictograph to ideogram : the history of 214 essential Chinese/Japanese characters. calligraphy by Rebecca Hon Ko. New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN 0-89659-774-1.
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