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Chinese Character Lookup & Decomposition

Look up a Hanzi for Pinyin, radicals, strokes and decomposition, or find an unknown Chinese character by combining the components you can recognize.

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Enter a Chinese character to inspect its structure

Looking up character data

Try a sample

Color-coded component glyph

Colors identify the outermost components. Select a tree node to focus the strokes that belong to it.

明

Showing every stroke in 明

Character decomposition tree

The glyph is expanded by structure. A radical is a dictionary index, while components are the visual parts used to form a character.

Structure data comes from Make Me a Hanzi; readings and variants use Unicode Unihan. Decompositions can vary by glyph region and source and are not a single authoritative account of character origin. Character data documentation · Unihan documentation

Chinese character decomposition

Decompose a Hanzi or find a Chinese character by its components

This Chinese character lookup turns IDS notation into familiar left-right, top-bottom and enclosure layouts. Its component search also identifies an unknown Hanzi from one to four visible parts, without requiring Pinyin or pronunciation.

More than a radical label

See the dictionary radical alongside the other components and nested groups that make up the modern character shape.

Search with multiple components

Combine visible parts such as 氵 and 青 to find 清, repeat 木 three times to find 森, then narrow matches by total stroke count.

Continue with practical tools

Open animated stroke order, Pinyin, handwriting lookup or a printable Tian Zi Ge worksheet without entering the character again.

How to look up a Hanzi or search by components

If you know the character, enter it to view its color-coded glyph, radical and decomposition tree.
If you do not know it, switch to component search and enter one to four recognizable parts.
Optionally filter by total stroke count and sort by common usage or stroke count.
Choose a result to open its full details, stroke order, Pinyin or worksheet tools.

Chinese character decomposition questions

Are radicals and components the same thing?

No. A radical is mainly an indexing category used by dictionaries. Components are the visible units that form a character, so one Hanzi can contain several components but normally has one indexing radical.

Why do decomposition results differ between sources?

Characters can be divided at different levels, and Simplified, Traditional, mainland Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese glyph conventions may use different shapes. More than one analysis can therefore be reasonable.

Does the tree show the true etymology of a character?

Not necessarily. The tree describes the visible modern glyph. Formation labels are learning aids and should not replace specialist paleographic or etymological research.

Can I paste more than one character?

Yes. The tool extracts up to twelve Han characters and creates a tab for each one. Punctuation, Latin letters and numbers are ignored.

Can I find a Chinese character without knowing its pronunciation?

Yes. Enter one to four visible components and the tool returns characters containing all of them. Repeated components are counted, so 木木木 can find 森.