The same four dots mean three different things (黒 馬 魚)

Look at the bottom of 黒 (kuro, black), 馬 (uma, horse) and 魚 (sakana, fish) and you’ll see the same four little dots. They look identical, but they come from three different places: fire in 黒, the horse’s legs in 馬, and the fish’s tail in 魚. Two of those are straightforward history, and 黒 comes with a twist.

Four dots of fire: 黒

The four dots, 灬, are the form 火, fire, takes at the bottom of a kanji. Japanese calls them れっか (rekka) or れんが (renga), and you’ll see them in kanji for heat and cooking, like 熱 (netsu), heat, and 煮る (niru), to simmer.

The traditional story of 黒 is soot. The Shuowen Jiezi, a Chinese dictionary from around 100 CE, defines black as “the colour of what fire has smoked”: flames rising from below and blackening a window or chimney above. That’s the video’s version, and it’s a fine way to remember the kanji.

The oldest forms suggest a different start. On oracle bones and early bronzes, 黒 looks like a standing person with a mark on the face, and the scholar Tang Lan read it as someone tattooed with ink as a punishment. Later the lower half of the figure was redrawn as flames, and the Shuowen’s soot explanation was built on that later shape. So the dots in today’s 黒 really are fire, but the fire may have arrived by mistake.

Four legs: 馬

馬 began as a picture of a whole horse: a long head, a flowing mane, a body, legs and a tail. In today’s shape, the four dots at the bottom are the feet, and the long hooked stroke is the tail. Four feet, four dots: of the three, this one is the most literal.

A tail: 魚

魚 began as a drawing of a whole fish, head at the top and tail at the bottom. As scribes straightened its curves, the tail was gradually written like 火, a change that set in from the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods on. Today it’s the same four dots as 黒.

So the video’s three answers hold up for the kanji we write today, with one footnote: in 黒, the fire itself may be a later arrival.

How to use them

• 黒い服が多いね。

  Kuroi fuku ga ooi ne.

  You wear a lot of black, don't you?

• 馬に乗ったことがありますか。

  Uma ni notta koto ga arimasu ka.

  Have you ever ridden a horse?

• 魚と肉、どっちがいい？

  Sakana to niku, dotchi ga ii?

  Fish or meat, which would you like?

• 金魚を飼っています。

  Kingyo o katte imasu.

  I keep goldfish.

• 魚 has two native readings. さかな (sakana) is the everyday word, for fish in the sea and fish on the plate. うお (uo) survives in words like 魚市場 (uoichiba), a fish market. In compounds it’s ぎょ (gyo): 金魚 (kingyo), goldfish, and 人魚 (ningyo), a mermaid.
• 黒 in compounds is こく (koku), as in 黒板 (kokuban), a blackboard. And 黒字 (kuroji), “black letters”, means being in the black, in profit, just as in English.
• 馬鹿 (baka), fool, is written “horse deer”. It’s ateji, kanji picked for their sound, with a story of its own.

Words with the same kanji

Remember it

Same four dots, three jobs: the fire under a sooty pot (黒), the hooves of a horse (馬), and the flick of a fish’s tail (魚).

The kanji in this lesson

Tap Draw it to watch the stroke order. Numbers show where each stroke starts.

Draw it

Draw it

Draw it

Sources

• Multi-function Chinese Character Database (CUHK): 黑
• Wiktionary: 馬
• Multi-function Chinese Character Database (CUHK): 魚

Written by the Chirami team with the help of AI, then checked against JMdict and KANJIDIC2. How we write lessons. Spotted a mistake? Email support@brightsmilesolutions.org.