年月日 — The Date, Biggest First

The oldest 年 is a person walking home with ripe grain on their back — the harvest coming in. Northern China gets one harvest a year, so one grain-carrying became one year. Thousands of years of writing have melted the strokes together; the farmer and the wheat are both still in there, just tired. It is also why 新年, the new year, matters so much — the counting word itself was born on a farm.

A drawing of the crescent moon. The sun 日 got a full squared-off circle; the moon keeps its bite taken out. A month is one round of the moon, so number + 月 simply counts moons — 一月 is moon one. You have already met this shape hiding inside 明 — sun and moon together, bright — and inside 明天, the bright day: tomorrow.

The earliest form had three little suns on top — a sky full of sparks — later trimmed to one, with 生 shēng underneath lending its sound. 星期, the star period, is the week: the old seven-day cycle was named after the sun, the moon and the five visible planets — Japanese still says moon-day for Monday. Modern Chinese kept the star and retired the gods: Monday is simply 星期一, star-period one. The tidiest calendar reform imaginable.