The word role meaning “the part one plays” or “the character one assumes” appeared in English first in 1606.

role的意思是“某人发挥作用的部分”或者“某人扮演的对象”，这个词1606年首次在英语中出现。

youdao

The studiers of Chinese character usually think that one Chinese character only has one original meaning.

汉字学界通常认为：一个字在最初造字的时候只有一个本义。

youdao

So the group proposed assigning one code to each character with a common meaning in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, even though, in practice, the same ideogram is often written differently by different nationalities.

CNN: COMMUNICATION