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Is there an etymological connection between 輪{リン} as in 車輪{しゃりん} and "ring" in
English? Or is this a false cognate?
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kanji etymology onyomi false-cognates
Does the on'yomi of 輪 (リン) have any relation to the English "ring", or is it a coincidence?
> Is there an etymological connection between 輪{リン} as in 車輪{しゃりん} and "ring"
> in English? Or is this a false cognate?

There are a few things we have to look at to answer this.

### Derivation of different Japanese readings

As we can see [in the Jisho.org entry](https://jisho.org/search/%E8%BC%AA),
_rin_ is an _on'yomi_ for the kanji 輪. _On'yomi_ are the "sound readings", the
literal meaning of the spelling 音【おん】読【よ】み, in reference to the _sound_ of the
kanji as borrowed from Chinese. So any question about the _on'yomi_ of a kanji
is ultimately a question about Chinese.

### Middle Chinese pronunciations

Looking at the [Wiktionary entry for Chinese
輪](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%BC%AA#Chinese), and particularly the
**Pronunciation** section, we see that modern Mandarin pronounces this as
_lún_. That's not very close to Japanese _rin_.

⇒ Japanese _on'yomi_ readings ultimately derive from Middle Chinese. Sometimes
we know that a particular _on'yomi_ is more specifically a 唐音【とうおん】 or "T'ang
sound" borrowed during the T'ang Dynasty, or a 宋音【そうおん】 or "Song sound"
borrowed during the Song Dynasty. At any rate, we can (mostly) ignore the
modern Chinese readings. _(Sometimes the modern varieties are informative for
hinting at where a particular vowel value may have appeared. But that's beyond
the scope of this thread.)_

The Middle Chinese pronunciation is reconstructed as //liuɪn//. And if we
click that ▼ downward pointing triangle to expand the section, we see a
sampling of the different reconstructions from various academic authors.

I believe that part of the reason for the wide variety of reconstructions is
that Chinese itself has so many different varieties. Think about English even,
where different regions or dialects have different phonetic realizations of
words. Just the first-person pronoun "I" can have several actual
pronunciations, such as:

  * //aɪ//
  * //aː//
  * //ɑe//

Looking back at the Middle Chinese reconstructions for 輪, we see that some of
them are even closer to Japanese _rin_ than the "main" Zhengzhang Shangfang's
reconstructed form of //liuɪn//, such as Pan Yuwun's //lʷin//.

So Middle Chinese //lʷin// (or something like that) was borrowed into Japanese
as the _on'yomi_ of _rin_.

### Where the Middle Chinese came from

But we still haven't answered your initial question. :)

The Middle Chinese came in turn from Old Chinese, with a Zhengzhang
reconstructed reading of //*run//. The character 輪 itself was composed as
semantic (meaning) radical 車 plus 侖 as the phonetic (sound) base. We don't
have any further etymological information about this (or at least, I can't
find any based on sources to hand).

To rephrase your initial question, **is Old Chinese //*run// somehow related
to modern English _ring_?**

Following up on the Chinese term, our data was inconclusive.

### Where the English _ring_ came from

Turning to [the Wiktionary entry for
_ring_](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ring#Etymology_1), we see that English
_ring_ is traced back to [Proto-Germanic
_hringaz_](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-
Germanic/hringaz) ("ring; circle; curve"), derived from Proto-Indo-European
(PIE) _*(s)krengʰ-_ , derived in turn from [PIE
*(s)ker-](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-
European/\(s\)ker-#Root_2) ("to turn, to bend").

### Comparing reconstructed ancient roots: Old Chinese and PIE

PIE _*(s)krengʰ-_ and Old Chinese //*run// don't match up very well.

However, [PIE is tentatively dated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-
European_language) to around the time of the domestication of the horse, maybe
6000 years ago. Old Chinese is reconstructed to [around 3270 years
ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Chinese#History). That's a lot of time
-- so we must still ask if the PIE _*(s)krengʰ-_ might have given rise to Old
Chinese //*run//.

We know from long research into sound correspondences between PIE daughter
languages that the change from PIE //(s)kr-// to Proto-Germanic //hr-// was a
regular shift. We can also see from [the list of
descendants](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-
European/\(s\)ker-#Derived_terms_2) that all other branches of PIE include
that hard //k// at the start, with or without the //s//. So the **only**
branch where the initial //(s)kr-// in reconstructed PIE _*(s)krengʰ-_ lenited
(softened) into just //r-//, as in both modern English and Old Chinese, is the
Germanic branch -- the branch of PIE that was most distant from Old Chinese
speakers.

### Conclusion -- tentative

Given the state of current academia (as publicly accessible by me at the
moment, anyway), it appears that English _ring_ and Japanese _rin_ are only
accidentally similar in sound and meaning.
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Eirikr's answer has pretty conclusively demonstrated that ["ring" meaning
"round object"](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ring#Etymology_1) is unrelated,
but I can't help but point out that there's a second meaning as well in
English, namely ["ring" as in the sound of a
bell](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ring#Etymology_2).

Intriguingly, in Japanese the common tō-on on'yomi of the [kanji for
bell](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%88%B4#Kanji) 鈴{リン} is also _rin_ ,
and this character's reconstructed Old Chinese reading is /*reːŋ/. And it's
not just the bell itself: in Japanese, the sound of a ringing telephone is
りーんりーん, while in modern Chinese it's 鈴鈴 _línglíng_.

So while they're still unlikely to be directly _related_ (as in descended from
each other), it's quite possible that both evolved in parallel from
onomatopoeia for the sound of a ringing bell.
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I would preface an attempt to answer this question by _firmly_ establishing
the original meaning of「輪」. _Ring_ is not actually a good translation of the
character in Chinese (which has other words for _ring_ ); the two most common
translations for「輪」in Chinese are:

  * _Wheel_
  * _Cycle_ (or the related _revolve_ )

Notice the「車」( _chariot_ ) semantic in「輪」:「輪」originally referred to the
**spoked wheels** on a chariot. From [_Shuowen
Jiezi_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuowen_Jiezi):

> 有輻曰輪，無輻曰輇。从車，侖聲。
>
> _If it has spokes, it is called_ 「輪」 _; if it doesn't have spokes, it is
> called_ 「輇」 _. From semantic_ 「車」 _and phonetic_ 「侖」.

This is probably why several academic opinions consider this character

`商  
金  
[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fmDya.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fmDya.png)  
輪盤  
集成10010`

which appears in [Shang Dynasty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shang_dynasty)
[bronze
inscriptions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_bronze_inscriptions) as an
ancient representation of the word, but was later made obsolete by「輪」. Note
that「侖」does not contain a picture of a wheel, so is not related to the above
character and not related to the meaning of「輪」.

The meaning _wheel_ is important, because the hypothesised Tocharian borrowing
into Chinese for related meanings is for PIE
[**/*kʷékʷlos/**](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-
European/k%CA%B7%C3%A9k%CA%B7los) ( _wheel_ , _circle_ ) rather than
**/*(s)krengʰ-/** , and **/*kʷékʷlos/** is speculated to have been the source
of「車」( **/*kʰlja/** ). For「輪」to be related to _ring_ , one would need to
demonstrate that Tocharian languages showed the same kinds of shift as
Germanic languages (as given in @EiríkrÚtlendi's answer), or I would sooner
consider「輪」to be related to **/*kʷékʷlos/** instead.

* * *

Carrying on from @EiríkrÚtlendi's link ([ _How likely are chance resemblances
between languages?_](https://www.zompist.com/chance.htm)), I would add that,
even if a phonetic shift model between PIE _anything_ and OC **/*run/** was
proposed, there needs to be much stronger evidence that **/*run/** was related
to some PIE root, because of _chance/coincidence_. Take a look at the
[phonetic
series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonetic_series_\(Chinese_characters\))
for **/*run/** , noting that none of these characters apart from「輪」have
anything to do with the meaning _wheel_ :

> [![enter image description
> here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dB8YL.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dB8YL.png)
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