King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “primitive”

原始
yuán shǐ
first; original; primitive; original (document etc)

The closest CC-CEDICT match for primitive is 原始 (yuán shǐ), defined as: first; original; primitive; original (document etc).

Before using these characters for a tattoo, check them with a native speaker. Dictionary words often have several meanings, and the right choice depends on context.

Characters and stroke order

原 yuán
source, origin, beginning
radical 27 ⼚ · 10 strokes
始 shǐ
to begin, to start; beginning
radical 38 ⼥ · 8 strokes

Related words

Other words that share a character with 原始.

WordPinyinMeaning
原因yuán yīncause; origin
原来 (原來)yuán láioriginal; former; originally; formerly; at first
原则 (原則)yuán zéprinciple; doctrine
原本yuán běnoriginally; the original; original copy; original version
原理yuán lǐprinciple; theory
开始 (開始)kāi shǐto begin; to start; beginning; start
始终 (始終)shǐ zhōngfrom beginning to end; all along
创始人 (創始人)chuàng shǐ réncreator; founder; initiator

See also: Japanese symbol for “primitive”.

Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3); Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License (graphics.txt); LGPL-3.0-or-later (dictionary.txt)); wordfreq (CC BY-SA 4.0 (data)). Retrieved 2026-10-22.

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