姜
jiāng · HSK 7
ginger
🫚 jiāng sounds like 'jong'; the surname Jiang also means ginger root
姜 covers two senses: the family name Jiang and the spice ginger. The bottom 女 (woman) sits under 羊 (sheep), a phonetic-style stack rather than a meaning clue, so anchor it to the sound jiāng plus the ginger sense.
姜 — sheep 羊 on top + woman 女 below
Originally a phono-semantic compound where 羊 (sheep) provided the sound and 女 (woman) hinted at meaning, used as an ancient surname tied to the Jiang clan. Over time it also came to mean ginger, a sense now usually written 薑 in traditional script but merged back into 姜 in simplified Chinese.