Deer and Lu are homophonic, so the ancients often used pun rhetoric, referring to deer as a title and also to people with titles.
Deer is one of the radicals of Chinese characters, and the words with the meaning of "deer" are mostly the names of deer animals, such as elk, muntjac, musk deer and forest.
The ideographic word "deer" has appeared in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. It is shaped like a deer, with horns, head, body, feet and tail. Although there are some inflectional forms in each stage, the development of characters is still very clear.
Although Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jin Wen are not exactly the same, they both depict a deer with its head facing left and its tail facing right. The deer's head is up, with beautiful antlers. Below it is the deer's body, tail and feet. The image is beautiful.
Although "Xiao Zhuan" is not like a deer after seal cutting, the "mountain" shape on it still shows unique antlers and deer feet under it. The biggest change in the official script stage is that the original part of the deer's foot was separated from the form and became concrete, thus greatly reducing the pictographic meaning of the whole word.
Deer is a common animal in ancient times and also the focus of hunting. In Oracle Bone Inscriptions, there are many records of Shang kings "fighting for deer" and "winning deer".
Later, the number of deer decreased, but it was still the favorite hunting object of the royal family, so there were sayings such as "competing for the deer in the Central Plains" and "whose hand will die". In fact, the deer here has extended from animal deer to a kind of political power and power.