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I noticed that 煙 in the phrase 茶煙永日香{ちゃえんえいじつかんばし} sometimes appears as 烟. For
example, here is [a teapot with 茶煙永日香](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yvx5M.jpg)
and [a scroll with 茶烟永日香](http://www.suehiroya946.com/27_17052.html). Is there
a difference in meaning between 煙 and 烟?

煙 and 烟 obviously have similarities. Both mean "smoke" or "fumes", and both
have the 火 radical on the left. Both appear appropriate for decorative uses.

However, the right part of 烟, 因, means "cause" or "association", while the
right part of 煙, [垔](http://zhongwen.com/d/206/x88.htm), appears to mean
"block" or "dam". These radicals seem pretty different.

[This same question was asked in
知恵袋](http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q1123407876). The
answer was simply that they mean the same thing, but that 烟 is not standard
and thus less common.

Perhaps I am over-thinking things, but are the meanings of 煙 and 烟 truly
identical, or do the right radicals suggest some subtle difference in meaning?
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word-choice kanji synonyms homophonic-kanji
Are the meanings of 煙 and 烟 identical?
Just for reference, according to an online Chinese dictionary 烟 appears to be
considered the simplified variant of 煙.

I don't think that the right-hand components have anything to do with the
meanings here. Both of these look to have right-side phonetic components
relating to their on-reading of エン. Other kanji using 因 have readings of イン or
エン, as do other kanji using 垔.

形声文字{けいせいもじ} is the term for these sort of kanji, which have a meaning
component 意符{いふ}, and a sound component 音符{おんぷ}. It only works for some on-
readings, but it's common enough to take note of. 張・帳(長・チョウ） or 胴・銅（同・ドウ） are
examples. An example of one which is not a left-right split would be 草 which
has the "grass" radical on top and the same on-reading (ソウ) as 早 does.

So there is probably no meaning difference (or at least, there is none in the
modern language). However, there would be a stylistic difference in the choice
of a kanji variant over what is now considered the standard form, and there
may be cases such as names where the use of one or the other is now fixed and
they are not interchangeable.

e.g. [here](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A9%E6%88%90%E5%9C%92) there is
an example of a waterfall named 飛烟の瀧 (picture of the sign included, they do
put furigana on it). I believe this would be a case where using 煙 would be
incorrect.

ETA after seeing your comment: I have seen suggestions that sometimes the
original choice of phonetic component could be related to the meaning, for
example that 清 uses 青 not just for the sound, but because the meaning is
related. (This theory is apparently called
[右文説](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8F%B3%E6%96%87%E8%AA%AC)). You probably
need to be into old Chinese to really dig into this.

The [Wiktionary](http://ja.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%85%99) entry on 煙 suggests
that the 垔 side may have an origin from a combination of 西 (here being
equivalent to "window") and 土 (here being equivalent to "hearth"), so
representing something like window/opening above a hearth where smoke emerges
from a fire. It also says that 烟 is a shorthand form that has been around for
a while.

If that's correct, then just as you sometimes see kanji in compounds swapped
for another kanji with the same reading which doesn't necessarily have the
same meaning (for example 綺麗 being written 奇麗), 因 could have simply been
swapped in for 垔 in this kanji as slightly quicker to write. Or there might
have originally (in Chinese) have been some subtle difference in meaning which
has since been lost.
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