Yeah I know what you mean.. At school we were told that 火 (fire) was actually derived from the shape of a camp fire, 目 (eye) from the shape of an eye, 川 (river) from the streams of the river etc.. I was actually discussing this with a friend the other day, and he didn't believe a word of it, saying it was all a coincidence.. I was brain-washed from my early ages that it was like that, but does anyone have more "scientific" proof of this? :emoji_blush:
There really is scientific proof!
I will copy and paste my usual answer to this question below:
Wouldn't it be nice to really be able to explain the form of Chinese characters? Fortunately, the discovery of material from the period in which Chinese characters originated about 3000 years ago (tortoise plastron and oracle bone writings) in 1899, provided us with new first-hand knowledge on the formation process of these characters and ultimately changed our understanding of them. Basically, Chinese characters can only be understood on the base of knowledge about ancient Chinese culture and customs. This is due to Chinese characters having originated in line with actual social rituals of very early times. They are never abstract constructs apart from the circumstances of this life. Based on the religious notions from the time in which Chinese characters developed, the very nature of these rituals is reflected in the structure of the characters.
The well-renowned scholar of Chinese characters Shirakawa Shizuka (1910 – 2006) successfully analyzed these earliest character forms and made a number of key discoveries that ensure him a prominent place in the hall of fame of this discipline. Among these is the breakthrough discovery that the part 口 included in many characters originally does not depict a mouth (kuchi in Japanese) as had been taken for granted before, but a covenant receptacle (sai). Shirakawa's research results and publications offer a more fun and logical Kanji learning alternative to remain in the learners' memory and is standing out against most of the mechanical, inhuman and authoritarian learning methods employed at schools and universities which are far from giving any convincing systematic explanations based on the historical facts.
One of Shirakawa's character form explanations that first got stuck in my head is that of 取る (toru). Why does it mean "to take, to pick up" although it consists of 耳 (mimi – ear) and the part (that for some just looks like the Japanese phonetical katakana nu) 又? It means "to take" because Chinese warriors used to cut off their slain enemies' ear on the battlefield and kept them as a piece of evidence for a later reward. The part 又 originally is the shape of a hand. Shirakawa's books provide many convincing explanations of this kind and at the same time give insight into ancient Chinese ways of thinking. For those who cannot read his works in Japanese, there's good news since there is a complete English translation of his dictionary primer 常用字解 (Jôyôjikai) by the title The Keys To The Chinese Characters (published with CreateSpace). Moreover, the commentary includes various translations from passages of other works by Shirakawa.