I just came across/learnt this Kanji for romance 恋. I find it pretty interesting that it’s components is made up of red and heart which is pretty symbolic of romance. So I guess I’m wondering if it was intentional or just a weird coincidence
(or if the concept of red hearts has some kind of root here). Lol idk what I’m asking.
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The original character is 戀, and then 恋 is a simplified form. 戀 is a phono-semantic compound where 䜌 lends its reading of れん and 心 supplies the broad meaning. Though you can imagine the meaning of “chaos” for 䜌 being related to love in some sense. Chaos plus spirit equals love, perhaps.
From what I can see, the upper portion of 恋 was used as a simplified version because of calligraphy… I guess when it got cursive-ified it looked like that over time.
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That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for clarifying 
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Just a note of clarification… The way I worded that makes it sound like I analyzed ancient calligraphy and noticed a change over time or something. I just meant that that’s the explanation I read heh.
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which came first, the 恋 or the 
the world will never know
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