Why is the kanji for luck the same as to carry?


Why is the kanji for うん(運) the same as the kanji for 運ぶ? Did the kanji just
somehow end up being the same, or were the two meanings related somehow? All I
can think of is some kind of "carrying luck", but that doesn't seem right.




I think there are multiple interpretations of this character, but it's clearly
a combination of 辶 (from 辶) and 軍, which suggests the movement-related meaning
came first and "luck" was a derived meaning. But how was it derived? Here's
what Henshall has to say:

> 辶 is **movement** 129. 軍 is **army** 466 q.v. Some scholars take the latter
> in a literal sense, giving **army on the move** and by association
> **transportation** and the **fortunes** of war. Others take it to act
> phonetically to express **round** , as well as lending its own connotations
> of both **circle** and **vehicle** (from a circle of vehicles), thus giving
> a meaning of **vehicles rolling along** , and hence **transport**. **Luck**
> is then felt to stem from an association between fortune and circular/cyclic
> movement.

It seems like the exact way it came to mean "luck" is unclear, but there you
have a couple possible ways it could have happened.




I think there are multiple interpretations of this character, but it's clearly
a combination of 辶 (from 辶) and 軍, which suggests the movement-related meaning
came first and "luck" was a derived meaning. But how was it derived? Here's
what Henshall has to say:

> 辶 is **movement** 129. 軍 is **army** 466 q.v. Some scholars take the latter
> in a literal sense, giving **army on the move** and by association
> **transportation** and the **fortunes** of war. Others take it to act
> phonetically to express **round** , as well as lending its own connotations
> of both **circle** and **vehicle** (from a circle of vehicles), thus giving
> a meaning of **vehicles rolling along** , and hence **transport**. **Luck**
> is then felt to stem from an association between fortune and circular/cyclic
> movement.

It seems like the exact way it came to mean "luck" is unclear, but there you
have a couple possible ways it could have happened.

