Rhodium character

Rhodium, in modern Chinese. 钅 marks metal; 老 cues Mandarin lǎo, roughly “laow” with a low dip then rise. Traditional Chinese writes 銠.

In late Qing China, scientific translators needed compact names for new elements. The 1871 chemistry text 化学鉴原, by Chinese scholar Xu Shou and British translator John Fryer, helped establish one-character names pairing a metal marker with a sound cue. A premodern dictionary records 銠 in 铑𠠻, a separate term for large iron coins.