0034 光

光  

This character represents ‘light, luster.’ It’s pronounced ‘hikari’ in Japanese and ‘guāng’ in Chinese.

The derivation is simple: it’s a person

儿  

(though this character now often means just a person’s legs)

and fire

火 ,

maybe a person holding a torch.

The ancient version above may have been ‘twenty fires’ rather than a man and a torch. Twenty fires would give a lot of light. The character for ‘yellow’

黄  

is the character for ‘light’ with ‘the earth’ (in modern terms, in Japan, a rice field)

田

superimposed over it. ‘Light earth,’ ‘bright earth,’ or whatever suggests the color yellow.