元

Before we move on to our character 远 or its Traditional counter party - 遠, we need to prepare ourselves with good understanding of 元 and 袁 first.

Today we will study 元. It is quite clear that, 元 is composed of 二 and 儿. Does it mean 2nd kids in the family? Sounds interesting. Let us see if we can confirm our guess with its ancient scripts.

evolution history of 元

Looking at Oracle script of however,  its upper part in Oracle Script is actually Chinese character 上 (details can be found at https://xiongzou.blogspot.com/2017/10/learn-one-chinese-character-day.html) instead of 二. Since refers to a person without doubt, the drawingthus should contain two potential meanings:

1. something above a person: sky or heaven.
2. upper part of a person: header.  

Actually both are the original meaning of 元. Just another Chinese character 天 was created to dedicate to mean sky or heaven.

for example in 元气, 元 means sky or heaven. and in 元首, 元 means head.

Same as English word head and heading, our Chinese character 元 contains the same context and is borrowed to represent meaning of first, beginning, origin, above or primary. 

Till now we full prepared ourselves to understand the first public holiday in China, which is 元旦. Translation of 元旦 literally is first sunrise, which means first day of a year!

Do not forget the meaning of sky and heaven that 元 represents as well! As great as the sky, 元 is also used to mean great.  for example: 元勋.

That is all, time to enjoy a Chinese calligraphy with 元 inside:

元德