What 辰 means
辰 is the fifth Earthly Branch, a calendar sign.
Mandarin reads chén; Japanese zodiac use reads tatsu. The 12 Earthly Branches pair with 10 Heavenly Stems, another sign set, to label years and times.
Early forms appear in divination writing on bone and bronze. Oracle bones from Shang, an early Chinese dynasty, attest the cycle around 1350 BCE. Later uses include 7–9 a.m., dates, auspicious times, and stars. Its original object may be a farm tool or hand-pushed seeder; interpretations differ.
Classical or calendrical; alone, 辰 is not casual dragon shorthand.
A lone 辰 needs context; it does not always mean “dragon.”
Part of the collection
Who writes 辰
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What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsThe branch paired with the Dragon.
Related characters
2
Questions people ask
1Why does 辰 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.
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How to type or find 辰
- Search it as
- chen · tatsu · Chinese zodiac · shichen · shengchen · liangchen · xingchen
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
辰\8FB0Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.