County or prefecture character

In Chinese, 縣 means a county; its older sense was “to hang.”

Bronze inscriptions from the middle Western Zhou period preserve the recognizable graph in a clan or place name. Earlier oracle-bone forms remain disputed. One interpretation sees a head hanging from a tree in the graph; the hanging sense predates its administrative one.

In late Spring and Autumn period bronze inscriptions, 縣 records counties: territories a state governed directly instead of granting to hereditary lords. That county role continued.

What does 縣 mean in Japan?

In Japan, 縣 is the old form of 県, meaning prefecture.

Chinese 縣 settled around the county sense; Japanese 縣/県 came to denote a prefecture. The ancient Japanese reading あがた (roughly “a-ga-ta”) referred to a royal domain or early local unit.

As of 2026, ordinary Japanese prefecture names use 県; 縣 belongs in archival or deliberately historical writing.

Is 縣 the same as 県 or 县?

县, 県, and 縣 are related forms; 懸 is a different character.

县 is the simplified Chinese form of 縣. As of 2026, Japanese uses 県 as the new form of the same prefecture character; 縣 is its old form.

In modern Chinese, 懸 is the character for “hang” or “suspend”; older Chinese texts may use 縣 with that hanging sense. CJK fonts can draw the same character with different local stroke shapes, but 県 and 縣 are distinct character forms. Read the surrounding language: Chinese administrative writing points to a county; Japanese historical writing can point to a prefecture.