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The character 我 (wǒ): I, me

A Chinese park in golden evening light: a red pavilion hung with lanterns, a weeping willow whose branches fall across the low sun, an arched stone bridge and the still water of a canal. At the left, in profile on the paving, a flat bright orange figure raises a hand and touches the tip of its own nose. At the right the character 我 in black, a barred stem hooked at the left, then a long curving stroke rising into a hook, crossed by a slant, a detached dot above.
Pronunciation
wǒ
Strokes
7
Level
HSK 1
Radical
戈
Made of
千戈

What it means

I; me; my

Where its shape comes from

The graph draws a weapon: a halberd with a toothed blade mounted on a long shaft, of which tombs have yielded bronze examples. The pronoun has nothing to do with it. The word for "I" happened to sound like the name of that weapon, so the weapon's sign was borrowed to write it, a common device that uses a character for its sound alone. Xu Shen, who could no longer see the weapon in the writing of his own day, offered a moral explanation instead. Palaeographers read the object.

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

A way to remember it

Seven strokes, and only one of them decides the shape: the long curving stroke that sets off at the top right, comes down bending towards the right and lifts again into a hook. Everything else crowds in to its left, and the small dot in the top right corner touches nothing.

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

Words it appears in

Writing it

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

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