About
Featuring the bottom woman radical 女 and the top phonetic element 敄, the character 婺 is a phono-semantic compound that originally conveyed meanings related to female beauty or obedience. Its primary usage later shifted from human descriptors to astronomical and geographical terms, becoming the name of a specific star in traditional Chinese astronomy and, subsequently, the established name for the Wujiang River and Wuzhou, a historical prefecture in modern Zhejiang province. This evolution marks its transition from an adjective to a proper noun.
Etymology Hide
