yuánzì Chinese characters of the chemical elements
锡

Tin Sn · 50

xī

solid metal · period 5, group 14 · p-block

Anatomy

钅 radical 金 jīn
metal → solid metal
+ 易 phonetic =
锡 xī

Ancient name. Known in China long before modern chemistry; the old character was kept. Named in ancient China

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 锡, traditional 錫, Taiwan 錫 xí.

1850187519001925195019752000antiquitytoday
錫 xī
antiquity · 古名 · Pre-modern usage — Classical texts (Shuōwén Jiězì, Běncǎo Gāngmù) one of the Five Metals; phonetic 易 reflects an old pronunciation1933 · 化學命名原則 · Principles of Chemical Nomenclature (1933) — Zhèng Zhènwén (鄭貞文), National Institute for Compilation and Translation Inferred: known by 1933, when the Principles fixed one character per element, and no later change is recorded.
  1. antiquity 錫 xī 古名 Pre-modern usage, Classical texts (Shuōwén Jiězì, Běncǎo Gāngmù) one of the Five Metals; phonetic 易 reflects an old pronunciation
  2. 1933 錫 xī 化學命名原則 Principles of Chemical Nomenclature, Zhèng Zhènwén (鄭貞文), National Institute for Compilation and Translationinferred Inferred: known by 1933, when the Principles fixed one character per element, and no later change is recorded.

Homophones

Sounds exactly like 硒 Selenium. Only the written radical tells them apart.

Same syllable, different tone: 𬭳 xǐ Seaborgium.

Elsewhere

Japanese スズ Korean 주석 Vietnamese thiếc

Western name from Anglo-Saxon via Middle English tin. Compare all

Unicode

U+9521 in CJK Unified Ideographs