The sun radical 日

Read rì, 4 strokes. It indexes 51 distinct HSK characters.

51HSK characters

4Strokes

#72Radical number

日Glyph

Quick answer

What does the sun radical (日) mean, and which characters use it?

Sun (日, rì) is Kangxi radical 72, and it usually marks a character whose meaning is connected to sun. 51 distinct HSK characters are filed under it, the most common being 时, 日, 明. When you meet a new character carrying 日, expect its sense to touch sun and let the other component hint at the sound.

How this radical works inside a character

Most characters built on 日 follow the meaning-plus-sound pattern: 日 sits on one side to signal the sun sense, and a second component supplies the approximate pronunciation. So you are rarely memorizing a whole new shape, you are recognizing sun plus a part you may already read. The list below is in corpus-frequency order, so the characters you will actually meet first are at the top: learn them in this order and the rest of the sun-radical family gets easier as you go.

All 51 sun characters 51 characters

#	Char	Pīnyīn	Strokes	HSK 3.0	HSK 2.0
1	时	shí	7	1	1
2	日	rì	4	1	1
3	明	míng	8	1	1
4	是	shì	9	1	1
5	早	zǎo	6	1	2
6	晚	wǎn	11	1	2
7	星	xīng	9	1	1
8	显	xiǎn	9	3	5
9	景	jǐng	12	3	4
10	易	yì	8	3	3
11	智	zhì	12	4	5
12	暴	bào	15	6	6
13	暖	nuǎn	13	3	4
14	普	pǔ	12	2	3
15	暗	àn	13	4	4
16	春	chūn	9	2	3
17	旧	jiù	5	3	3
18	暂	zàn	12	5	4
19	映	yìng	9	4	4
20	暑	shǔ	12	4	4
21	旺	wàng	8	6	6
22	晕	yūn	10	6	5
23	晃	huǎng	10	7-9	6
24	晶	jīng	12	7-9	6
25	晨	chén	11	2	6
26	晴	qíng	12	2	2
27	昏	hūn	8	6	6
28	晓	xiǎo	10	6	6
29	旬	xún	6	7-9	5
30	旱	hàn	7	7-9	6
31	昧	mèi	9	7-9	6
32	晒	shài	10	4	5
33	旦	dàn	5	5	5
34	旨	zhǐ	6	7-9	6
35	昂	áng	8	7-9	6
36	昨	zuó	9	1	1
37	昌	chāng	8	6	6
38	旭	xù	6	7-9	·
39	旷	kuàng	7	7-9	6
40	昆	kūn	8	7-9	6
41	昔	xī	8	7-9	6
42	昼	zhòu	9	7-9	6
43	晋	jìn	10	7-9	6
44	晤	wù	11	7-9	6
45	晰	xī	12	7-9	6
46	暮	mù	14	7-9	·
47	曙	shǔ	17	7-9	·
48	曝	pù	19	7-9	6
49	晾	liàng	12	·	6
50	暄	xuān	13	·	6
51	暧	ài	14	·	6

tone 1 tone 2 tone 3 tone 4 neutral Order = corpus frequency, most common first · · = not in that scheme

Strokes and radical assignment come from the Unicode Han Database (Unicode 17.0.0, field kRSUnicode); the HSK levels and the frequency order are computed from the shipped HSK word lists. A small number of characters have a contested radical across dictionaries; the primary Unicode analysis is used throughout. Last verified 2026-07-24. See the full radical explorer or the characters-per-level reference.

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Drill the sun-radical characters on a schedule

This list is free to browse and self-test here, always. If you would rather practice recognizing these characters on your phone with spaced repetition, we recommend Wordbrush, our one disclosed pick. Never a gate on this page.

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