Han

Meaning

Proper Noun

• An imperial Chinese dynasty, ruling (with interruptions) from 206 BC to AD 220, marked by the expansion of the Yellow River's Huaxia culture to the recent conquests of the Qin and a flowering of economic, literary, and scientific development
• The Chinese ethnicity, when distinguished from other peoples of the Chinese state
• An ancient Chinese county, viscounty, and kingdom of the Zhou dynasty and the Qin–Han interregnum
• The realm of this former state under other rulers
• The star Zeta Ophiuchi in traditional Chinese astronomy, named for this state
• A First Nations people of Canada and an Alaska Native Athabaskan people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group.
• The Northern Athabaskan language spoken by the Han people, or Hän Hwëch'in, in Alaska and the Yukon.

Related

Similar words

• Han Chinese (ethnicity)

Origin

• From Mandarin , from the dynasty founder Liu Bang's short-lived realm in Sichuan and Shaanxi among China's Eighteen Kingdoms, named for the Qin Empire's Hanzhong Commandery, headquartered at a city which also became known as Hanzhong, which is so named for being found on the middle reaches of the Han River
• From Mandarin , an ancient Chinese placename
• From Korean . Cognate with English Han (from Mandarin).