What 狒 means
The animal name uses the doubled form 狒狒. The early Chinese glossary Erya (《尔雅》) points to the Classic of Mountains and Seas (《山海经》), an old book of geography and strange beings; its account describes a shaggy, human-faced creature in the mountains.
Is 狒狒 an animal name or a legendary creature?
It names a baboon; early texts also describe a legendary creature. Classical sources link the figure to four other creature names: 枭羊, 山都, 人熊, and 野人. Modern zoology classifies baboons as monkeys rather than apes. In 2024, Taiwan's CNS 11643 listed three print styles for 狒—Kai (regular script), Song (serif), and Hei (sans serif)—so its strokes vary by font.
In Japanese, 狒狒 can insult an older lecherous man; a literary example is recorded in 1903.
Avoid using 狒狒 as a label for a person in Japanese.
Don't confuse it with
2Questions people ask
1Why does 狒 show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type 狒
狒\72D2Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.