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TL;DR : 饣 is the phonetic, not the signific. 饣, which is simplified from 食, is the radical of 饰/飾 only in the sense that it is listed that way in a Chinese dictionary. It is not the meaning-bearing part of the character. Here are two possible analyses. In both cases, 饣 is contributing to the pronunciation, not the meaning: 飾 = 食 (phonetic: shi2) + 布 ...

I can only provide a partial answer: Many of the characters used in the names of non-Han ethnic groups were originally derogatory. After the founding of the PRC, the government conceptualized New China as a 多民族国家, and they changed many of the characters that were perceived as derogatory. I don't know if this process started under the 国民党, as you suggest, ...

According to zdic.net, 饰 is formed of 巾, 人, and 食 (饣). 食 (饣) is the sound component, while the other portion suggests the meaning. The dictionary explains the character's components this way: 形声。从巾,从人,食声。人佩巾有装饰作用。 So, it's a 'pictophonetic' character which signifies a person wearing or adorned with a cloth, thus having the effect of decoration. If you're ...

On http://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en you can see how a character evolved, the simplified and traditional characters. For example for 目. Another similar website is http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterEtymology.aspx . Their result for 目. Zdict is completely in Chinese: http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE7Zdic9BZdicAE.htm Here is another website in ...

The former interpretation is correct. Chinese characters are composed of components (some radicals, some phonetics, some neither). For many of the components, there are standard or widely used ways to refer to them. A common pattern is {component}+字+{旁/头/盖/底/儿/框}. (The last part refers to which part of the character it is--e.g., side, top, bottom, "frame") ...

Your question is totally wrong on itself! “犭”（反犬旁/犬部） is a radical of Chinese Characters (Han-Zi,汉字) which is only for forming/making up some single Chinese Characters. In the creating era aka ancient times, people used “犭”(a radical, the variant of 犬 i.e. dogs) to make some Characters which is with some relation to beast such as ...

Victor Mair, the well known sinologist (and occasionally outspoken advocate of pinyin) consistently uses the word phonophore to describe the phonetic part of the character. If you start saying "phonophore" too, then there will be upwards of two people using the term. :-)