Wheat Character

Use a Traditional Chinese input method and select 麥. For Pinyin, the romanized way to enter Mandarin, type mài and choose 麥 from the candidate list; phonetic input may show homophones. Cangjie, a shape-based Chinese input method, uses 十人弓戈.

What does 麥 mean?

It means wheat and can name related cereal grains. Oracle-bone inscriptions—writing carved on bones and turtle shells—dated roughly 1500–1000 BCE use both 麥 and 來 for cereals; they do not always show whether 麥 meant wheat alone or wheat and barley. An early form of 來 pictured wheat and was later borrowed to write “come,” leaving 麥 with the grain sense.

The Shuowen Jiezi, an early Chinese character dictionary, describes 麥 as a grain with bristly tips, sown in autumn. It analyzes 麥 as 來 plus 夊, a foot-like component. Another character, 牟, is associated specifically with barley, though it is absent from the oracle-bone inscriptions.

Why is 麥 in 麥當勞?

There, 麥 contributes sound, not a word for wheat. In Hong Kong, 麥當勞 is the Chinese name for McDonald’s, chosen to echo its name in Cantonese. Read it as one brand name; its first character is not naming a grain.