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A phono-semantic compound, 鄢 is almost always a proper noun naming historical places, ancient states, or modern surnames. Its right side is the place radical 阝 (yì), originally the character 邑, classifying it as a settlement, territory, or administrative region. The left side, 焉 (yān), provides the pronunciation. Historically, it referred to an ancient state in present-day Henan during the Zhou Dynasty, later becoming a hereditary surname for the region's descendants. This pairing of a geographic radical with a phonetic component was the standard way to record specific place names in ancient texts.
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