名胜
míng shèng · HSK 6
a place famous for its scenery or historical relics
🏛️🗻 名胜 = famous + outstanding — a place so great it won its fame
名 means famous or name. 胜 means victory or surpass — something outstanding. Together: a place so outstanding it became renowned.
名 — evening 夕 + mouth 口
A compound ideograph: in the dark of evening (夕), one cannot recognize others by sight, so the mouth (口) calls out a name to identify oneself. The original sense of 'name' broadened to include reputation, fame, and a measure word for people.
胜 — flesh 月 (肉) + 生 sheng phonetic
胜 is a semantic-phonetic compound: the 月 (originally 肉 'flesh/meat') element gave it an early meaning related to raw or rank-smelling meat, while 生 supplied the sound. In modern Chinese it was adopted as the simplified form of 勝, meaning 'to win' or 'to surpass', so today it almost always carries that victory sense.