头晕
toú yūn · HSK 7
dizzy
😵💫 头 = head + 晕 = dizzy/spinning, so a head that's spinning = dizzy
头 (toú) is head; 晕 (yūn) means to faint or swoon. The 晕 character carries 日 (sun) over 军, the old sense being a haze or halo around the sun, which extends to a hazy, spinning head.
头 — 页 (head/page) + 豆 (bean, phonetic)
The traditional form 頭 combines 頁 (xié), meaning 'head', with 豆 (dòu) as the phonetic component. 頁 itself originally depicted a person with an emphasized head. The simplified form 头 is a modern shorthand that replaces 豆+頁 with a simpler shape while keeping the same meaning of 'head' or 'top'.
晕 — sun 日 on top + army/chariot 軍 (jūn) below
Originally a phono-semantic compound: 日 (sun) gives the meaning of a hazy halo or ring of light around the sun or moon, while 軍 hints at the sound. From 'solar/lunar halo' it extended to 'dizzy, faint, giddy,' as if one's vision were ringed and blurred.