Today we move on to a few Chinese character 袁, which is related to 衣 we just learnt. From the modern form 袁, we can tell that its bottom part 
is part of the 衣. By looking at its ancient scripts, it is even more obvious:
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| evolution history of 袁 |
Oracle script 
is quite obvious to have a hand 
which holds a cloth 
. Another Oracle script 
added the round collar of the cloth. And Bronze script 
moved the hand to upper part of 袁. Following characters of 袁 followed the pattern of Bronze script till current Regular script 袁.
So 袁 contains the original meaning of "taking a cloth", usually it refers to taking spare clothes when you would like to travel far away from home.
In ancient China, there is one officer whose duty is to prepare clothes for kings or governors. As part of the usual practice of Chinese ancestors, his descendants started to use 袁 as their family name. Now 袁 is used as family name only.
In order to represent the original meaning that 袁 represents - to prepare clothes for travelling away from home, Chinese ancestors added 辵, whose simplified version 辶 (details at https://xiongzou.blogspot.com/2015/11/learn-one-chinese-character-day_14.html) to 袁 to represent meaning of far away, which Chinese character we will study in our next post.
That is all for 袁, now it is time to enjoy a Chinese calligraphy with 袁 inside:
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| 致远 - 袁江 |
