A Random Question

[RokkuRi]

Just a random, pointless question...
If kanji are pictograms that represent their meanings graphically, why isn't the kanji for circle... A circle?
Just wondering. Anyone know?

[taikutsu]

The short answer is that they're not actually "pictograms", but rather part of a system of writing that originally had its origins in pictograms, much in the same way the predecessors to the Roman alphabet you're now reading did.

[QuackingShoe]

Because there were much, much more important objects that needed to be represented with the shape of a circle than the word 'circle' did. Language develops in a certain order - the things most inherent to human survival and experience take priority when choosing words and, in this case, shapes. Specifically, 'mouth',口, was much more important, so it was a circle. Additionally, 'the sun' is drastically more important, and the modern kanji for 'sun', 日, evolved from a circle with a dot in it. And 'eye', 目, was a circle with another circle in it, afaik. Etc.

The concept 'a circle' comes in somewhere near dead last.