A long time ago, when the eternal Elizabeth II ruled the domain, I was writing my Chinese homework and looked up the word queen in the dictionary. What I found, 王后 wánghòu, was particularly hilarious, because:
So there am I thinking. Very nice, very sexist, China; so the queen is literally defined as the one who is behind the king. The truth, however, is much more... Interesting? Worse? I'll let you decide.
As some of you may know, Chinese characters in mainland China went through a process called simplification, which attempted to improve the literacy rate of the population. Whether it succeeded, failed or had literally no effect is a matter of scholarly debate, but the end result is that some hanzi now have two forms: traditional and simplified.
One of the ways in which simplification was performed was by adopting a phonetic loan, and this is precisely what happened to the original character for behind. Originally spelled 後, it was simplified to 后, as they both share the same pronunciation hòu, but the latter is much easier to write.
The original meaning of 后 is queen and has nothing less to do with behinds. The glyph depicts a woman giving birth to the heir of the throne:
Now this is so much better. A queen is not defined by her position relative to the king, but by her 3D printing capabilities.
Looking how the glyph developed through the centuries, I can't shake off the feeling that it looks like the woman is sitting on the toilet. And indeed, some scholars argue that the glyph depicts a person and a hole, meaning rear, behind or anus. The character was sometimes used to represent this precise meaning in the oracle bone era.
If this is true though, why does it also mean queen? Does it indeed depict a childbirth? Were ancient sages unfamiliar with female anatomy? Was it up to debate where the baby came from? Had they even seen a woman? We will never know.
Have a good day!
Nick