Kanji for Apricot

杏 (anzu / kyō) is the apricot — the tree 木 over a mouth 口: fruit worth eating, drawn plainly. The apricot blooms just before the cherry, a pink so similar that hanami crowds sometimes admire the wrong tree; in classical arrangement it stands for feminine grace and, through Chinese tradition, for medicine itself — the “apricot grove” 杏林 has meant the medical profession for eighteen centuries, after a physician who took payment in planted apricot trees.

The kernel inside, 杏仁, gives its name to 杏仁豆腐 (annin dōfu), the almond-jelly dessert of every Chinese restaurant in Japan — actually flavoured with apricot kernels, as the characters admit.

As a given name, Anzu and An (杏) are warmly fashionable — helped by actresses of the name — and the character is Jinmeiyō: approved, sweet, and a little vintage, like the fruit itself.