龜 Radical 213 — a turtle, a tortoise
a turtle, a tortoise
Also written 龟 — the same radical in a different position inside the character.
Where the shape comes from
A turtle drawn from above and the side at once, in the flexible way early pictographs could combine viewpoints: the rounded shell overhead, and the head, legs and tail all splayed out around it as if seen face-on — a design so recognizable it barely changed across three thousand years of script reform. Turtle plastrons, cracked deliberately with heat during Shang-dynasty divination, were one of the two materials, alongside ox shoulder-blades, that gave the oracle bones their own Chinese name, 甲骨, shell-and-bone, and by extension gave this radical a second life as a symbol of longevity and steady fortune, still offered as 龟寿, a wish for a turtle’s long life. The same character carries two further readings: jūn in 龟裂, to crack, to chap, dry earth or skin likened to a tortoise’s patterned shell, and qiū in 龟兹, Kucha, an ancient Silk Road kingdom on the Tarim Basin’s northern rim.
characters filed under 龜
No published character on HSK Guide is filed under this radical yet. Character explorer.