yuánzì Chinese characters of the chemical elements
铍

Beryllium Be · 4

pí

solid metal · period 2, group 2 · s-block

Anatomy

钅 radical 金 jīn
metal → solid metal
+ 皮 phonetic
from beryllium
=
铍 pí

Transliteration. The phonetic half approximates the international name. Beryllium

History of the character

Every form found in the sources, from the first missionary chemistry books of the 1850s to the current standards. Hover a dot for the source. Simplified 铍, traditional 鈹, Taiwan 鈹 pī.

1850187519001925195019752000antiquitytoday
鈹 pí
1900 · 亞泉雜誌 · Yàquán Zázhì (1900) — Dù Yàquán (杜亞泉) proposed by Dù Yàquán and kept
鋊 yù
1905 · 化學新教科書 · Huàxué Xīn Jiàokēshū (1905) — Dù Yàquán (杜亞泉), Commercial Press for the older name glucinium (Gl); 鑉 was also used
鑉 hé
1920 · 日文轉譯 · Japanese-mediated transliteration — Early 20th-century textbooks another rendering of glucinium
  1. 1900 鈹 pí 亞泉雜誌 Yàquán Zázhì, Dù Yàquán (杜亞泉) proposed by Dù Yàquán and kept
  2. 1905 鋊 yù 化學新教科書 Huàxué Xīn Jiàokēshū, Dù Yàquán (杜亞泉), Commercial Press for the older name glucinium (Gl); 鑉 was also used
  3. 1920 鑉 hé 日文轉譯 Japanese-mediated transliteration, Early 20th-century textbooks another rendering of glucinium

Homophones

No other element shares this syllable.

Elsewhere

Japanese ベリリウム Korean 베릴륨 Vietnamese beryli

Western name from Sanskrit, Pali, and Prakrit via Greek, Latin, Old French, and Middle English City of Belur in India via Greek βήρυλλος (beryllos), “beryl", a mineral”. Compare all

Unicode

U+94CD in CJK Unified Ideographs