人口
じんこう · jinkou · JLPT N4 · noun
population
👥 人口 = person + mouth: count the mouths to feed
人 (jin) means person and 口 (kou) means mouth. A population was traditionally counted by the number of mouths that needed feeding, so person-mouths became the word for headcount of a whole region.
人 — pictograph of a standing person
人 is a pictograph showing a person viewed from the side, with two strokes representing the legs and torso of a standing human. In oracle bone script it clearly depicted a figure leaning slightly forward. The meaning has remained 'person' or 'human' throughout its history.
口 — pictograph of an open mouth
口 is one of the oldest pictographs in Chinese, originally drawn as a simple outline of an open mouth. Its core meaning 'mouth' extended naturally to 'opening' or 'entrance', as in 入口 (entrance). It also serves as a common radical in characters related to speech, eating, or apertures.