Abstract:
An investigative study shows that the character “我” were derived from two origins: one from “戈”(daggeraxe) and the other from “禾” and “戈”. It obtained the meaning from “cutting the hand(割手)” and “cutting crops (割禾)” and pronunciation from “戈”，which was pronounced as/guo/in local dialects, identical with the dialectal pronunciation of “割 (cutting)”. Therefore, the character “我” shared the primary meaning with “割”, meaning slaughtering or butchering, examples of which were found in the inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells. After the character “我” turned into selfaddress, the character “割” was created to carry the primary meaning. Besides, the character “手 (hand)” was written as—in ancient Chinese and crop ear was written as—, a drooping one of which was written as—. The three were so similar that confusion resulted, as was pointed out by Xu Shen. The character “——” was derived from “爪 (claw)” and “戈 (daggeraxe)”, which was thus the graphic form of “我” in inscriptions on ancient bronze objects.
