Ev's
Ecological Etymology

Etymology FAQs

What is this thing?

This dictionary is an evolution of my work with early Chinese etymology and classical translation. I started translating Chinese as part of my doctoral program in East Asian Medicine. I became frustrated with feeling like dictionaries were pretty unhelpful in translating classical Chinese, even dictionaries specifically for that purpose. However, once I got into the etymology, specifically looking at the older versions of characters, I began to see patterns in the character components that offered a cohesive framework for understanding the characters that was much simpler than the radical-component system that I was taught, and much different than the information offered by other etymologists.

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As a result of doing this work, I believe that Chinese characters emerged from early agricultural people in the area that is now China. My reasoning for this is that most of the characters consistently show a meticulous network images depicting the lifecycle of plants (primarily) and other images related to nature.

 

The work is an extension of my doctoral dissertation, Embodied Universe. The more I translate and work with characters, the more my ideas expand, evolve, and shed more light on my work with translating early Chinese. I wanted to house my evolving work with etymology and translation in a more flexible and accessible medium than formal academia or book publishing would allow. If you found me via my dissertation, you’ll find that some of my interpretations differ slightly here. The more I work with characters, the more refined my ideas become over time.

 

Where did you find the artwork and photos in the dictionary?

The drawings of the older characters that exist under each explanation are my own (ashamedly so, as I am neither a calligrapher nor an artist). They are based on the version of the character that I think best exemplifies the symbolism and meaning from those available at Richard Sears' monumental archive on hanziyuan.net. All other photos and graphics are compilations created using Canva unless otherwise noted.

 

Why are your interpretations different from what I learned from other teachers?

Please note that my interpretations are not in ignorance of the accepted academic meanings of components and characters that people pay a lot of money to learn at university, myself included. I do believe that it is best to know the rules before you break them, but once you do know them, it is often best to break them, or at the very least, question them. That’s how academic ideas become better over time. Although academics become adept at presenting opinions as irrefutable facts, academia is gilded in that way. 

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Thus, in the ways that my interpretations do no comply with the conventionally accepted ideas that are all too-often recycled in academia, it is a conscious act of creative disobedience, not an act of naïveté. Please don’t contact me to correct my erroneous ways unless you have something interesting to impart that is novel and not present in the majority of textbooks, published materials, or introductory university courses on classical Chinese. That is, unless, of course, I am dead wrong. ☺️ Then, feel free to give me a nudge to let me know where I have lost myself in the woods, and I will earnestly correct the error.

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Otherwise, thank you sincerely for your support and/or credit to my work should it prove useful in your own endeavors. Your support does matter.

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💗 Ev