Definitions
Tanka people
Etymology
About
The character 蜑 is formed by the phonetic component 延 (yán) above and the semantic radical 虫 at the bottom, which denotes insects or crawling creatures. Its primary historical use was as an ethnonym for the Tanka people, a southern Chinese ethnic group that traditionally lived entirely on boats and made their living by fishing. The character also occasionally served as an orthographic variant or an earlier form of 蛋, meaning 'egg' or an ovum. The presence of the insect radical is usually attributed either to ancient and often derogatory taxonomic practices that grouped southern indigenous peoples with crawling things, or to the broader biological association that linked eggs with insects, reptiles, and birds within the logic of classical character formation.
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