The list of pictograms in Chinese language

Chinese pictograms depict the objects they represent in a pictorial way, and they are the most original form of character formation. In this post, you can get the list of pictograms with pictures showing the character evolution.

Pictograms are one of the six different forms of the character formation (called 六书) in Chinese, and they are the most important basis for all the other characters. Some of them serve as semantic components to form characters, some serve as phonetic components, and others can serve as both semantic and phonetic components.

Features of pictograms

1. Chinese pictograms are vivid and pictorial

Chinese pictograms were created according to the real images of the subject things such as 雨 rain, 鸟 bird, 手 hand, 人 person, 水 water, 目 eye, 日 sun, 鱼 fish, 羊 sheep, etc. Although the pictograms have gone through different evolutions over the long history of China, we can still find the significant similarity between the present writing form of a pictogram and the image it stands for.

2. Pictograms are not drawings

Pictograms are simplified from drawings and remain the main characteristics of the drawings, and they are symbolic.

3. Most of the pictographic characters are single-element characters

Even though some of the pictographic characters have evolved into multi-component characters, most of them are single-element characters, which means they can’t be divided into two or more characters, for examples, 我, 日，山，鸟，羊，土，雨，手，耳，肉，and so forth.