瓊

It means red jade and can extend to beauty.

Mandarin pinyin, the Roman-letter system for writing Mandarin, spells 瓊 as qiong. The Shuowen Jiezi, an early Chinese dictionary, glosses it as red jade. In the Book of Songs, a classical poetry collection, “Papaya” uses 瓊 for jade returned in exchange for fruit, a gesture of goodwill.

Later literary use extends the word to beauty and preciousness. A commentary on liubo, an old board game, also records it for a die. Japanese dictionaries preserve the jade sense in the mythological name Ninigi-no-Mikoto (瓊瓊杵尊).