國

The character 國 is derived from 或, which itself is composed of 戈 ("spear," representing weaponry or force) and 口 (representing a walled city or area to be protected).

In bronze inscriptions (金文 jinwen), shapes resembling sticks surrounding the 口 suggest a wall or boundary, which evolved into the horizontal stroke 一 at the lower left of 或. In other words, 或 originally had the meaning of “country.”

Later, when 或 came to mean “perhaps” or “some,” a new character was needed to retain the original sense of “nation.” So, the enclosure radical 囗 was added to clarify the meaning, resulting in 國. The radical 囗 (different from 口) also came to symbolize the territorial boundary of a country. In its standalone form, 囗 is sometimes used as an unofficial abbreviation for 國.

The original pronunciation of 國 was closer to “seong” or “jeong.” The structure symbolized a walled city surrounded by territory, not necessarily a modern nation-state. In ancient times, there was a distinction between:

國 – the governing political center (e.g., a city-state),

邦 – the surrounding territories controlled by that center.

This was similar to the concept of a polis in ancient Greece or Etruria. However, after the founding of the Han dynasty, the use of 邦 declined, partly due to name-avoidance (피휘) for Emperor Liu Bang (劉邦), leading to 國 being used to refer to both the ruling center and its territory — the basis of the modern concept of a state.

This shift also happened in Korea and Japan, where 國 originally meant a small city-state, but as such entities faded, 國 took on the meaning of a territorial nation.

國 is commonly used as a prefix to mean “one’s own country.”

For example:

국어 (國語) – "national language" (i.e., Korean)

국사 (國史) – "national history" (i.e., Korean history)

국문학 (國文學) – "national literature"

국악 (國樂) – "Korean traditional music"

Similarly, 국군 (national army) refers to one’s own country’s military. This has also led to slang and compound words like:

국힙 – Korean hip-hop

국맥 – Korean beer

In Taiwan, Guóyǔ (國語) refers to Taiwanese Mandarin.

In Vietnam, Quốc ngữ refers to the Romanized Vietnamese script.

In summary, 國 has evolved from representing a fortified city to embodying the modern state, and its variants reflect a rich history of language, culture, and politics in East Asia.

囗 (U+56D7) - enclosure radical; component of 國;

囯 (U+56EF) - variant seen in old documents;

国 (U+56FD) - simplified form used in China and Japan, formed with 玉 ("jade") inside 囗;

囶, 囻 - rare variants;

圀 (U+5700) - was used in the Tang dynasty's Zetian character.

Though 囗 looks like 口 ("mouth"), it's larger in size and functions differently; it has largely fallen out of use in modern digital text due to visual similarity.

Interestingly, there also exists an obscure compound character 䆐, which is formed by stacking three 秦 characters and is used to represent a nation in rare cases.