0042 意

意

This character means ‘will, heart, mind, thought, meaning, sense, liking.’ It’s a bit like Persian جان [jān] , which covers a largely similar semantic territory. It’s pronounced I in Japanese and yīn in Chinese.

The lower element

心,

modified here to fit in its location, means ‘heart, mind, spirit.’

Above that is a version of ‘mouth’ (which looks exactly like a character that means ‘day, sun’), and above that is

立,

which means ‘to stand up, to rise.’ Here, though, at least one commentator (Sears) says it represents an upside-down man standing on the ground.

This combination, then

音,

means either ‘an utterance’ (from standing and speaking?) or an upside-down man speaking with his mouth,

, which you can see in the archaic character.

Adding all that up—a man speaking an utterance from his heart/mind—produces the notion of ‘will, intention,’ which is the meaning of today’s character.