folk · falsezh
明
the story everyone tells
日
sun
月
moon
sun and moon together
The reading everyone knows: bright = the two biggest lamps, 日 (sun) + 月 (moon), side by side.
but read it straight
Close, and half-ancient — but the canonical form is 月 (moon) + 囧 (a lattice window): 明 is moonlight falling through a window (Shuowen lists 朙, 从月从囧). A 日+月 form did coexist in the oracle bones, so ‘sun and moon’ is an ancient variant that later won out — a reanalysis, not a pure invention. The character lived its own slipsooth: 囧 drifted into 日, and now we all read ‘sun’.
source · Shuowen 朙 = 囧 (window) + 月 (moon); the 日+月 form is the 古文 variant that prevailed — Wiktionary / 說文解字