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The character 猃 (xiǎn) originally referred to a long-snouted hunting dog and was also used in the names of ancient northern nomadic tribes. It is a phono-semantic compound combining the semantic radical 犭 (quǎn, meaning 'dog') on the left with the phonetic component 佥 (qiān) on the right, which hints at the character's pronunciation. The traditional forms 獫 and 玁 employ the more intricate phonetic 僉. The simplified version replaces 僉 with 佥, streamlining the character while preserving the canine radical. While the dog radical literally denotes the hunting dogs of antiquity, its application to tribal names is an ethnographic metaphor.
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