List of Chinese Radicals
Chinese characters can be decomposed into components called radicals or bushou.
The most commonly accepted table of radicals for traditional Chinese characters consists of 214 entries. These 214 radicals
were popularized back in the reign of Qing emperor Kangxi, who commissioned what is now known as the Kangxi Zidian,
a character dictionary listing over 47,000 entries. Tables with fewer or greater number of radicals have been devised
for simplified characters. Being able to recognize the common radicals helps in the learning and recognition of new characters. Some but
not all radical are complete characters in their own right. Some radicals have more than one form. Finally, simplified
characters have resulted in additional variants.
In the following table, the English names were taken from the Unihan database, a database
of international characters. The stroke count refer to the main form of the radical only.
Do some radicals look very similar? We have compiled another table of similar looking radicals.
