太陽 Cantonese pron.: Taai Yeung. Mandarin: Ta Yang. The first character is a simple ideograph - imagine a person with arms outstretched, saying "the fish was this big!". Now derive from it the word 'very' (an exaggeration of big), and differentiate by adding one more stroke (originally underneath, but it crept upwards).

The second character originally meant the sunny side of the valley, as it's companion 'yin' meant the shaded side. Hence, by extension of meaning, warm, masculine, bold, vibrantly alive, hotheaded, and further such. In comparison, yin came to mean also cool, moist, quiet, feminine, and so forth.

So, 太陽 literally means the utterly manly thing (in the sky).
Yang is composed of a banner on the left side (which also refers to locations or placements), and on the right a compound with a sun on top, and a phonetic element on the bottom. Yin also has the banner, but instead shows swirls of fog, the one the bottom being meant as a mirror image of the one on top.

As you may have guessed by now, one of my favourite books is "Chinese Characters: Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification and Signification", by Dr. L. Wieger. I've already worn out two copies, and am busy on my third (it is also a VERY handy reference book).

I'm taking the liberty of mirror posting this on Mis-DakDek, to fill the current void there, and perhaps start a sidetrack. It seems a good place for that.


Note: original conversation starts here: http://boroparkpyro.blogspot.com/2005/11/back-time-solar-haiku.html