金

By extension, it means one of the precious metals, 'gold.' Furthermore, it can also mean 'money.'

金 is a pictogram originally representing the shape of a mold used to cast tools and weapons made of metal such as axes and spears.

There are many theories about its exact origin, but a neat explanation is that it is a phono-semantic compound of 今 (pronounced "jin," meaning "now") for sound and 玉 (jade) for meaning.

Another view suggests it is composed of 今 (phonetic) and 土 (earth) as semantic.

The two dots inside the 王 (king) component originally appeared separately on the left side in bronze script but were later moved inside in the small seal script.

Historically, before the Warring States period in ancient China, 金 referred to copper (銅, tong), since copper was easy to melt and ore was easily found. Later, as metallurgy developed to include other metals, the meaning expanded to metals in general. Eventually, as copper’s status as a precious metal declined, 金 shifted to primarily mean gold, and a new character, 銅, was created for copper.

When used as a surname or some place names, it is read as "김."

In other contexts, it is read as "금."

金 is a key radical used to form characters mostly related to metals and minerals.

All metallic elements in the periodic table in Chinese use 金 as a radical.

The shape resembles 全 (meaning "complete"), but 全 is a character with the 入 radical, while 金 is a phono-semantic radical.

The top "ᄉ"-shaped stroke is slightly different in 金 compared to 全.

The character is visually similar to the Korean Hangul character for "숲" (forest).