想像
そうぞう · souzou · JLPT N3 · noun
imagination
🐘 想 think + 像 likeness = thinking up a likeness of something unseen
像 contains 象, elephant. In the classic Han Feizi story, people in old China had never seen a living elephant, so they worked out what one was like from its bones. Working out the unseen became 想象, later written 想像.
想 — heart 心 + 相 (xiāng, phonetic)
想 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The heart radical 心 at the bottom carries the meaning, since classical Chinese located thought and feeling in the heart. The top component 相 (xiāng) supplies the sound, and over time the character settled into the senses 'to think,' 'to want,' and 'to miss.'
像 — person radical 亻 + elephant 象
Originally 象 alone meant 'elephant' and by extension 'image/likeness,' since elephants were rare and people knew them mainly through depictions. The 亻 (person) radical was later added to specialize the meaning as 'image, likeness, resemble,' leaving 象 for the animal itself.