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The character "嫘" derives from the name of the mythological figure Lei Zu, wife of the Yellow Emperor and associated with the invention of silk production in early Chinese lore. Its construction pairs the semantic radical "女", indicating a female person, with the component "累", which functions primarily to approximate the sound "léi" rather than convey meaning. Over time, this character has remained semantically stable, almost exclusively denoting this specific legendary name without developing independent lexical uses or broader signification in the language.