I was wondering if anyone knows the etymology of this kanji 湯. I'm
specifically looking for the Japanese variation of Bath or "yu". My wife's
last name in kanji is 湯上 (Yugami).
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kanji etymology
Looking for the History of the Kanji 湯
The meaning in modern Chinese is "soup" or "hot/boiling water". The simplified
character is 汤. It's composed of a water radical 氵 and 昜, which means "to open
out, to expand". The original meaning was "hot water, and the sound which
emanates from it [熱水也從水昜聲]" — hence the usage of the 昜 component. (see 说文解字 at
[hanziyuan.net](https://hanziyuan.net/#%E6%B9%AF)).

The modern Mandarin pronunciation of the 昜 component is (pinyin) yáng, which
is somewhat similar to the Japanese pronunciation yu. I don't know if that's
coincidental.

The page linked above also seems to say that 昜 is a phonetic component from
"sundial" — which I can certainly imagine, with the sun 日 casting shadows 勿 on
the sundial — but I don't see any indication of this character having that
meaning in my Chinese dictionary.

You can also see the above linked website to see depictions of various script
forms throughout history for that character.

As for the history of the pronunciation, the character's Chinese pronunciation
hasn't changed much since middle Chinese (around the time that Japan became
literate in Chinese characters). See [Wiktionary
entry](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%B9%AF) for details. In pinyin,
that's tāng, or /tʰɑŋ/ in IPA, so for the onyomi of tou, it's not a big leap
to see how the velar nasal /ŋ/ opened up to a high back vowel /u/ when it
crossed into Japanese. Or maybe that's just a long /o/, I'm not really an
expert in Japanese (or anything).

Chinese/Japanese characters are one of the great things about east Asian
cultures. There's a lot of history behind every one.
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Looking up [the etymology of the Japanese kanji
"湯"](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%B9%AF#Japanese), you will find "From
Old Japanese. Used in the Man'yōshū, completed some time after 759 CE."

And looking up a [Chinese etymology dictionary named
象形字典](https://www.vividict.com/Public/index/page/details/details.html?rid=5095):

>
> 昜，既是声旁也是形旁，是“陽（阳）”的本字，日照，表示天然的温热。湯，金文（水，泉流）（昜，即“阳”，表示天然的温热），表示温泉。篆文承续金文字形。造字本义：名词，天然具有热度的温泉。

Basically translated as:

"昜" is the original word for "陽", meaning natural warmth. You can find the
character "昜" in "太陽", meaning "the sun". And the radical "氵" represents
"water", pronounced 「さんずい」, in kanji such as "泳" or "波". So if you compose "氵"
with "昜", you got "hot spring".

As for the pronunciation, "yu". According to [this
site](https://jisho.org/search/%E6%B9%AF), it's not an on-reading(音読み), but a
kun-reading(訓読み), so it's not related to Chinese pinyin. (By the way, the 音読み
is トウ).

And according to [語源由来辞典](http://gogen-allguide.com/yu/yu.html):

> 湯の語源には、温泉が湧き出る意味の「いづ（出）」の反や、「湧」の字⾳からなど諸説あり、有⼒とされているのは、「ゆるむ（緩む）」の意味とする説である。
> 冷⽔は縮まるようなものであるのに対し、湯は⾝も緩やかになるものなので妥当な説といえる。

The kun-reading(訓読み) is related to 「ゆるむ（緩む）」, which originates from "the
relaxing feeling you get when you get into hot springs".
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