Privacy and self with 私

Competing Formation Accounts

Kanjipedia, citing Kadokawa’s revised Shinjigen, classifies 私 as 会意形声. It combines 禾, grain, with 厶, シ and private, and interprets the character as grain enclosed as one’s own possession. It also records an alternative phonosemantic account in which the original meaning was a kind of rice. The draft reproduces the first explanation but omits this qualification. Kanjipedia, 私

CUHK analyzes 禾 as the semantic component and 厶 as the sound component. It tentatively favors Chen Bingxin’s proposal that 私 originally designated private fields, then was borrowed for the private/public sense. It quotes the Shuowen’s grain explanation and Duan Yucai’s interpretation involving a grain name. These are distinct proposals, not successive steps established by the evidence. CUHK Multi-function Chinese Character Database, 私

Shirakawa’s Jitsu gives a different account: a semantic combination of 禾 and 厶, interpreting 厶 as a plough and 私 as a dependent cultivator. It disputes the grain explanation’s attestation. Heibonsha, Jitsu

Older Forms and Early Uses

CUHK supplies bronze, small-seal, and bamboo/silk forms. Its discussion cites 私工 in bronze inscriptions as a workshop designation associated with private households, including rulers’ and nobles’ establishments. It also cites 私車 in the Shuihudi Qin legal slips for a privately owned vehicle. These attest private affiliation and ownership; they do not prove the enclosed-grain story. The database’s proposed private-field meaning draws on the Shijing poem Datian and Mao’s gloss identifying 私 as people’s fields. CUHK Multi-function Chinese Character Database, 私

The Japanese Pronoun

The abridged Nihon Kokugo Daijiten records わたし as a changed form of わたくし. Its わたくし entry cites a personal-affairs noun in the Kokin Wakashu and a pronoun example in Haru no Miyamaji, dated 1280. These are dictionary attestations, not exact dates when the senses arose. They do not establish a direct historical chain from a Chinese grain image to Japanese I. Shogakukan, Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten