New characters?

[Kong Junrui]

How do new characters get made? And who decides what they look like and what they mean and everything? Is there some area of the government in China that is in charge of this kind of stuff?

For example, say a new element is made. How would they decide to name it and it's character once it is given an actual name in other languages?

Or another example, that isn't possible but gets to the point: Say a new color is discovered, one that can't be described by other colors. How would you know what to call it, and who would give it a name?

[kudra]

I'm not sure you would need a new character for a new element, possibly just a new combination of existing characters.

How do you say Berkelium in Chinese anyway?

http://www.chemicalelements.com/elements/bk.html

The entry in my revised and enlarged edition of A New Practical English-Chinese dictionary

has an entry but it's a description, not a translation/transliteration.

一種放射性元素

一种放射性元素

regarding skylee finding the one-character per element table of elements -- I stand corrected.

[skylee]

berkelium = 錇/锫 (pei2) ->

http://liuyifeng.nease.net/table/Berkelium.htm

http://liuyifeng.nease.net/table/etable.htm

[allenlikewo]

It appears the initial question still remains unanswered. I am interested to know as well, who is responsible for new characters? Or at least the standardization of them?

I guess in English new words are made up all the time. Allot of times out of slang or combining words or just random stuff people make up. But it really never seems to be widely accepted as a "real word" until it is officially added to dictionaries. But... English and Chinese are sooo very different (and China is communist) so I would assume characters are delegated in a more official way in China but I don’t know.

So... if anyone has any information about this I would be interested to find out.

[Yuchi]

I don't have the time right now to browse it, but:

http://www.china-language.gov.cn/

[Quest]

From wikipedia:

造字及组成

在秦始皇统一汉字后，汉字的数量也在不断地增加，很多新造的字不断出现：

隋文帝杨坚原为隨国公，但因“隨”字的“辶”有不稳定之意，故去掉“辶”，而造“隋”字作为国号。

唐朝时，武则天根据“日月當空”之意而造字“曌”（同“照”字）作为她的名字。

五代劉岩取“飛龍在天”之意創了自己名字內的“龑”字。

在近代，由於大量西方知识的涌入，也造了许多字。例如随着“Beer”传入中国，如何用汉字表达是一个问题，最初译为皮酒，后觉不妥，於1910年左右创造了“啤”字——译为“啤酒”。为了表示英制的单位，还造了一些多音节的字，如浬（海里）、嗧（加仑）、瓩（千瓦）、呎（英尺）等。不过这些多音节的字在1977年7月20日大陆中国文字改革委员会和国家标准计量局发出《关于部分计量单位名称统一用字的通知》中被淘汰，在大陆地区已不再使用，但臺灣等地仍可见到。

目前由於信息化及用字的规范，汉字已经不再任意增加新字。唯一的例外是元素周期表中的各种元素，如“氦”、“氯”、“氡”、“锗”、“铬”、“铀”等。这种造字方法还在一直沿用，用于新元素的命名。化学元素的造字规律详见元素。

六书是汉字构成的分析，在周禮中就提到了六书，但是没有说明具体内容。东汉许慎在《说文解字》中详细阐述了“六书”的汉字构造规律：象形、指事、会意、形声、转注、假借。其中，象形、指事、会意、形声四项为造字原理，是“造字法”；而转注、假借则为用字规律，是“用字法”。其中值得注意的是“转注”，汉代许慎对它的解释是：“建类一首，同意相受，考、老是也。”后代的文字学家针对许慎的这个定义也作了大量的解释。其中包括“形转说、声转说、义转说”三类,这三种说法都不全面。当代古文字家林沄先生解释说“转注”就是一个形体（字形）记录两个读音和意义完全不同的两个词。例如甲骨文中的“母和女” “帚和婦”等等。惟要注意的是，“六书”是对汉字产生的整理及分类，并不是造字的法则。

[LiYuanXi]

I think in different chinese speaking countries, there are different variations of the new chinese words.

For example, when cheese was known to the chinese, it was given the name 乳酪，奶酪，芝士，起士etc. These variants are used in different countries. Over here in Singapore, we are using芝士. You can't say anyone of them is wrong.

[Lu]

As I understand your question you're not asking about new words (combinations of characters) but about entirely new characters. As far as I know these are not made. In case of a new phenomenon (for example, a computer, or a cellphone) a new combination is made up, sometimes a loneword from another language (LiYuanXi's example, or jingji, borrowed from Japanese), sometimes a description of the thing in Chinese (diannao, shouji). For all those words characters from the original set are used.