The character 有 (yǒu): to have

A New Year market stall under a bright red awning: red lanterns with gold caps and yellow tassels, bundles of blank red paper scrolls on a wooden trestle and in a crate, a grey brick wall, blue sky. A large flat coral hand, palm toward the viewer and fingers spread, holds a plain red envelope edged with gold. At the right, on the wall, the character 有 in solid black, its top bar crossed by a stroke sweeping down to the left over a two barred frame.

Pronunciation: yǒu
Strokes: 6
Level: HSK 1
Radical: 月
Made of: 左月

What it means

to have; there is; (bound form) having; with; -ful; -ed; -al (as in 有意[you3yi4] intentional)

Where its shape comes from

On the oracle bones this character is a hand and nothing more, the same hand that is written 又 yòu on its own. The bronze inscriptions add flesh, 肉 ròu, which shrinks inside a character to a shape indistinguishable from the moon, as it does in 脸 liǎn, the face. That gives the modern graph: a hand laid on a piece of meat, so to hold, so to possess. Xu Shen read the upper part as a sound indicator instead, and palaeographers no longer follow him there.

Source: Xu Shen, Shuowen Jiezi (121 CE); the Chinese University of Hong Kong character database.

A way to remember it

A bar, a stroke that crosses it and runs away downwards to the left, and beneath them a frame with two bars inside. The frame looks like 月 yuè, the moon: its left upright is STRAIGHT, where the moon's curves. That is the only visible difference between them, and it is enough.

This is a memory aid, not the origin of the character.

Words it appears in

没有 méi yǒu · HSK 1 haven't; hasn't; doesn't exist; to not have; to not be
只有 zhǐ yǒu · HSK 3 only have ...; there is only ...; (used in combination with 才[cai2]) it is only if one ... (that one can ...) (Example: 只有通過治療才能痊愈|只有通过治疗才能痊愈[zhi3 you3 tong1 guo4 zhi4 liao2 cai2 neng2 quan2 yu4] "the only way to cure it is with therapy"); it is only ... (who ...) (Example: 只有男性才有此需要[zhi3 you3 nan2 xing4 cai2 you3 ci3 xu1 yao4] "only men would have such a requirement"); (used to indicate that one has no alternative) one can only (do a certain thing) (Example: 只有屈服[zhi3 you3 qu1 fu2] "the only thing you can do is give in")
有名 yǒu míng · HSK 3 famous; well-known
所有 suǒ yǒu · HSK 4 all; to have; to possess; to own
有趣 yǒu qù · HSK 4 interesting; fascinating; amusing
有利 yǒu lì · HSK 5 advantageous; favorable

Writing it

See the stroke order of 有, animated stroke by stroke.