The Chinese symbol for happiness — 乐 (lè)
乐 has two readings and two meanings in one character: lè is joy, and yuè is music. Music came first. A reader meeting a lone 乐 has to guess which one you meant, and that ambiguity is the main thing to weigh before choosing it.
At a glance
- Character
- 乐 full dictionary entry
- Pinyin
- lè
- Literal meaning
- Joy; happy — and, read yuè, music
- Dictionary senses
- Happy (cheerful - take pleasure - laugh) From the same dictionary as our translator.
Stroke order
What 乐 means
Where the character comes from
The traditional 樂 shows a wooden frame strung with silk — a rack of bells or a stringed instrument on its stand. The musical sense is the original one; joy is the extension from it.
How it is actually used
快乐 is happy — 新年快乐 is the New Year greeting — 音乐 is music with the yuè reading, 乐观 is optimistic, 娱乐 is entertainment, and 乐意 is willing.
What 乐 does not mean
It does not mean happiness as a settled state of wellbeing. That is 幸福 — the contentment of a good life rather than the cheerfulness of a good afternoon.
Claims you will meet elsewhere
"乐 means happiness."
It means joy, and half the time it means music. If the intended reading matters, 快乐 or 幸福 removes the ambiguity that a single 乐 cannot.
"囍 is the character for happiness."
囍 is 'double happiness' — 喜 written twice — and it belongs to weddings specifically. It is not a general-purpose happiness character, and using it outside that context reads oddly.
"幸福 and 快乐 are interchangeable."
快乐 is a mood you can have this afternoon. 幸福 is an assessment of a life. Chinese keeps them apart much more strictly than English keeps 'happy' and 'happy'.
For the general version of this problem — why a machine translation of a single word so often reads as confident nonsense — see Why AI Translators Guess.
The character in different scripts
简体
繁體
This is the largest simplification gap on the list after 义: 樂 has fifteen strokes and 乐 has five, and they do not resemble each other. Anything calligraphic, classical or Taiwanese will use 樂.
The words 乐 lives in
This is the part a symbol list leaves out, and it is the fastest way to feel what a character actually carries. Readings and meanings come from the same dictionary that powers the translator; tap any word for its full dictionary entry.
Other ways to say happiness
乐 is one answer, not the answer. Which of these is right depends on what you mean by "happiness" — and that is usually the question worth settling before anything is written down permanently.
Delight. 喜欢 is to like, 喜事 is a happy occasion, and doubled as 囍 it is the wedding character.
Happiness as wellbeing — a good life rather than a good mood.
Happy, cheerful. Two characters, no ambiguity, and the one people actually write.
乐 — frequently asked questions
What is the Chinese symbol for happiness?
乐 has two readings and two meanings in one character: lè is joy, and yuè is music. Music came first. A reader meeting a lone 乐 has to guess which one you meant, and that ambiguity is the main thing to weigh before choosing it. It is written 乐 and pronounced lè.
What does 乐 not mean?
It does not mean happiness as a settled state of wellbeing. That is 幸福 — the contentment of a good life rather than the cheerfulness of a good afternoon.
Is 乐 commonly mistranslated?
Yes. The claim you will meet most often is: "乐 means happiness." It means joy, and half the time it means music. If the intended reading matters, 快乐 or 幸福 removes the ambiguity that a single 乐 cannot. This page lists 3 such claims about 乐 with what is true instead.
Is 乐 the same in simplified and traditional Chinese?
This is the largest simplification gap on the list after 义: 樂 has fifteen strokes and 乐 has five, and they do not resemble each other. Anything calligraphic, classical or Taiwanese will use 樂.
What else can I use for happiness in Chinese?
Depending on what you mean: 喜, 幸福, 快乐. This page explains when each one is the right choice, and 乐 itself lives in words such as 快乐, 音乐, 乐观.
Concepts that get confused with this one
Keep going
Check any wording of your own in the Chinese to English translator before it goes anywhere permanent, look 乐 up in full in the dictionary, learn the components it is built from in the Chinese Radicals guide, see it used in real sentences in the example sentence bank, or read Why AI Translators Guess for why single-word translation is the hardest kind.