About
洧 is a phono-semantic compound: the water radical 氵 (shuǐ) on the left indicates a body of water, while the phonetic 有 (yǒu) on the right supplies the sound. It was created as the proper name of the Wei River, an ancient tributary in present-day Henan prominently featured in the Classic of Poetry. Because it is a proper noun, its use is largely restricted to historical geography, classical literature, and occasionally personal names, following the standard practice for naming rivers in Chinese.
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