Chinese Etymology Website

[Tianjin42]

My teacher brought this website to my attention and I felt that it may be useful to a few of you here. It‘s a free website (though it does solicit donations) through which you may search the etymology of characters, both using traditional and simplified characters.

http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=%E8%BB%8A&submitButton1=Etymology

It isn’t the most user-friendly, though if you enter a character into the box on the left it provides an impressive array of parent versions including LST Seal, Bronze Characters and those from the Oracle Bones.

There are a number of other features though I will let you have a look for yourselves.

Whilst I haven't used this in an academic context yet, it has been interesting just to take a look.

[OneEye]

I'd be cautious about using this in an academic context. I don't know enough about the subject to say for sure, but I'm told by a friend who is doing his PhD research in Warring States excavated texts that it's full of errors, and even flat-out wrong information. It may be a useful starting point sometimes, but I'd be careful about citing it in a paper.

[Tianjin42]

I would agree with that, and don't intend to use it in a high-level academic context. As a free resouce it seems fairly interesting and at least seems accurate on the few characters I checked.