How to Write 冯 (féng/píng) — Meaning “Feng (a surname)”

Imagine a horse (马) trying to walk on ice (冫) — it is a dangerous and reckless action, just like the idiom 暴虎冯河. The image of a horse slipping on ice helps link the two parts together.

Write the left radical 冫 as two small dots stacked vertically, placed high and close together. The right side 马 should be written with three strokes: horizontal, vertical, and a final horizontal, making sure the horse is slightly taller than the ice radical. Common mistake: making the left side too large or writing the dots too far apart.

冯 has a horse (马) on the right, while 冰 has water (水) on the right and means 'ice'. 冱 has the component 互 (mutual) on the right and means 'frozen' or 'stop'. Visually, 冯 is the only one with a horse shape on the right side.

冯 is almost exclusively used as a surname, for example in names like 冯刚 (Féng Gāng). It appears in the old idiom 暴虎冯河 (bào hǔ píng hé), which means to take reckless risks, but the character is pronounced píng in that context, not féng.

Common words containing 冯 include: 姓冯 (xìng féng) — surnamed Feng; 暴虎冯河 (bào hǔ píng hé) — To be foolhardy; to take reckless risks (literally: to fight a tiger barehanded or cross a river without a boat)..