Second character from the top left.
Character existed since the Shang dynasty.
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The more I look at it, the more it looks like not only is that person resting under a roof, he’s obviously taking a nap.
I thought that person was praying…
He’s obviously performing squats. It’s leg day.
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平安無虞
The last one.
虞 [yú], worry, concern
Mr Wu [吳], attacked by a tiger (head) [虍], surely has reason to worry.
The top [⺊] is supposed to depict the stripes on a tiger head.
Looks like a man with one hand up, another on his hip.
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The original character, often seen in 騶虞 (/*[ts]ˤro [ŋ]ʷ(r)a/) might have meant lion, and was just another way to write 狻猊 (/*[tsʰ]u[r] ŋe/), which would make it a phonetic borrowing of the Proto-Indo-Iranian *ćárguš, and making the term a cognate of the English word jackal.
It went the the same sound changes as 娛. The 吳 phonetic compound was originally something like /*[ŋ]ʷ(r)a/ in Old Chinese. So Taigi’s giâ as in giâ-kang (蜈蚣) and ngôo as in the surname Ngôo (吳) is a lot closer to OC. In OC, all of these characters would have been pronounced the same.
I guess the split between 吳 and the other class of 虞 and 娛 began in Middle Chinese with characters like 吳 with a mid vowel, like /ɔ/, and 娛, 虞 with a close vowel, like /u/.
In Mandarin, the ŋ initial was lost, and a chain shift happened where the 吳 characters moved to close vowel, and 娛, 虞 fronted, giving them that /y/ vowel.
That’s definitely the kind of dragon China have always aspired to be.
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