信念
xìnniàn · HSK 5
belief
🙏 信 (trust) + 念 (thought) = trust-thought = firm belief
信 means trust or believe; 念 means thought or to think on. Together: a thought you trust in, a conviction held firmly. Compare 信心 (confidence) which pairs trust with heart instead of thought.
信 — person 亻 + speech 言
信 combines 亻(person) with 言(speech), depicting a person standing by their words. The original sense is 'truthfulness' or 'sincerity'—what a person says can be trusted. From this it extended to 'believe,' 'trust,' and later 'message' or 'letter,' since a letter carries one's word.
念 — 今 (now, phonetic) + 心 (heart)
念 is a semantic-phonetic compound: 心 (heart) gives the meaning, while 今 (now) supplies the sound. The original sense was 'what is on the heart right now' — a thought held in mind. From this came the modern meanings 'to think of,' 'to miss,' and 'to recite' (holding words in mind).