先
This character means ‘first, ahead, previous, the future.’ In Japanese, it can be pronounced SEN and saki, and in Chinese it’s xiān.
All my informants (see Useful Information) agree that the two ‘legs’ in the bottom half of the character,
儿
signify ‘a man.’ No one agrees, or even has a convincing story about the top half. So we are left to our own devices.
牛
represents a cow or a bull (which no commentator mentions), and this is very close to the top half of the character. It seems helpful to see a man and a bull together and picture the man driving the bull ahead, or even into the future.
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