Another Short History of Linguistics (17)

We have symbol for male ♂ and ♀ for female, but since the restriction of 26 letters, we could not put these symbols in word, only regard them as random symbols.

But Chinese don’t have this limit. They can use different symbols and even without sound. Beside the symbols of what we have said about gender, there were another couples of symbols about it. When expressing the meaning of gender in Chinese, there is no strict limit to use which one, at least, I could not find the restriction. Reference from: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_640c60e00101c4f9.html 

The first pair is 公母，the 公means male but normally for animal. The the upper part of character公 is八 looked like female animals hip:

Pic from: http://www.equineprotectionnetwork.com/slaughter/starve3.htm

The lower part of 公 is厶 originally is:

Easy to understand that they are penis and testicles. Put them together means male. This character later shift the meaning as ‘public’. Perhaps the 厶 later shift to ‘private parts’, against private it could be public.  Another meaning of 公 is ‘duke’ and dukedom is 公国.

While 母 means female. The character came from the character 女 ‘girl’. Put another line on女it would look like:

And put two points in each case would be 母. The two dots means two breasts. Originally it means mother, and the derivative meaning is female to make a pair with 公.