嘉 (jiā) — Praised as Fine · Goodness Said Aloud

Nine strokes sit on top of this character, and they are a drum on its stand. 许慎's dictionary defines the stand-alone graph 壴 as 陈乐立而上见也: music set out, upright, its top in view. His 壴 section is short. After 壴 itself come a word for standing a thing up, a drum for the night watch, 彭 for the sound of beating, and last this entry: 嘉，美也。从壴，加声. The 古牙切 printed with it is 徐铉's, from the Tang rhyme book, and is not part of the Han definition. 《广韵》 puts 嘉, 加 and 家 in one homophone group under that cut. 段玉裁 explains the drum in one line, 壴者陈乐也，故嘉从壴. The music is out because there is an occasion. 喜 has its own section just before, built 从壴从口 and glossed 乐也. The two graphs still share their top nine strokes. One closes with a mouth and is gladness. The other closes with 加 and is a judgment that something is fine.

加 is the half 许慎 does not explain here. On its own page he defines it as 语相增加也, words piled one on another, from 力 and 口. In this entry he gives it only as the sound, and this page does not turn it into a meaning. 段玉裁 spends his note on use instead. 《尔雅》 glosses the word as 美 and, in a second place, as 善. On 《周礼》's 以嘉礼亲万民, 郑玄 writes 嘉，善也，所以因人心所善者而为之制: these rites are built on what people's hearts already approve. 段 also lists places where the classics wrote another graph for this word. The Mao commentary on the 大雅 and 周颂 glosses 假 as 嘉. In the audience chapter of 《仪礼》 the king greets an arriving lord with 予一人嘉之, I, the one man, commend it, and 段 notes that the new-script text put 贺 in that slot. 贺 is 从贝加声 in the Shuowen, goods with the same phonetic. Congratulating and commending sat close enough to trade graphs.

The gloss is 美, yet in the texts the word keeps arriving with a speaker attached. A father reads the hour of a birth and gives a name he calls fine. A host in Jin has the musicians sing 鹿鸣, and the visiting envoy names the song as the host's way of commending his ruler. A king at an audience says it of a lord who came. 韩愈 uses it of a student in the last sentence of an essay. 美 can be present in a face or a field with no one remarking on it. This character took on the remark, the person making it, and often the music laid out for the occasion. Its adjective, its verb, and its ritual class have stayed one word.

A city in southern Taiwan carries a commendation as its name. During the 林爽文 uprising of 1786 the walled county seat of 诸罗 was besieged for some ten months, and its residents helped hold it. In 1787 the Qianlong court renamed it 嘉义: the court found the 义 of those who held the walls fine, and put that finding on the map. The older name had come from the Hoanya village 诸罗山社. The new one is a sentence with a speaker in it, and the speaker outranked the town. That is the usual direction for this word. A ruler, a teacher, a host, or an employer says it, and the town, the student, the guest, or the employee receives it.

《周礼》's list of the fine rites reads like a guest list for a whole life. Under 以嘉礼亲万民 it puts food and drink with kin, 婚冠 for weddings and for coming of age, archery feasts with 故旧朋友, old friends, banquets for visitors from the four quarters, sacrificial meat sent to brother states, and 贺庆 between states of other surnames. Weddings, cappings, and evenings with old friends were one kind of occasion. Hung alone today, the character meets two common guesses. It is a familiar given-name character, so a stranger may first read a person's name. The other guess is 佳 (jiā), the plain fine of 佳节 and 佳人, which the Tang rhyme book still kept in a different rhyme, 古膎切 against this character's 古牙切. The tattoo notes are for those two guesses.