yuánzì Chinese characters of the chemical elements
氦

Helium He · 2

hài

gas · period 1, group 18 · s-block

Anatomy

气 radical 气 qì
gas → gas
+ 亥 phonetic
from helium =
氦 hài

Transliteration. The phonetic half approximates the international name. Helium

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 氦, traditional 氦.

1850187519001925195019752000antiquitytoday
氜 rì
1898 · 化學元素修正表 · Revised List of Chemical Elements (1898) — Educational Association of China (益智書會) 气 + 日 “sun”: the gas found in the solar spectrum
氦 hài
1915 · 無機化學命名草案 · Draft inorganic nomenclature (1915) — Ministry of Education, Republic of China phonetic 亥 to follow the international name
  1. 1898 氜 rì 化學元素修正表 Revised List of Chemical Elements, Educational Association of China (益智書會) 气 + 日 “sun”: the gas found in the solar spectrum
  2. 1915 氦 hài 無機化學命名草案 Draft inorganic nomenclature, Ministry of Education, Republic of China phonetic 亥 to follow the international name

Homophones

No other element shares this syllable.

Elsewhere

Japanese ヘリウム Korean 헬륨 Vietnamese heli

Western name from Greek ἥλιος (hélios), “sun”. Compare all

Unicode

U+6C26 in CJK Unified Ideographs