五

Historical forms of the character 五
Shang	Western Zhou	Warring States	Shuowen Jiezi (compiled in Han)	Liushutong (compiled in Ming)
Oracle bone script	Bronze inscriptions	Chu slip and silk script	Small seal script	Transcribed ancient scripts

Oracle bone script j29736 j29737 j29738 j29739 j29740 j29741 j29742 j29743 j29744 j29745 j29746 j29747 j29748 j29749 j29750 j29751 j29752 j29753 j29754 j29755 j29756 j29757 j29758 j29759 j29760 j29761 j29762 j29763 j29764 j29765 j29766 j29767 j29768 j29769 j29770 j29771 j29772 j29773 j29774 j29775 j29776 j29777 j29778 j29779 j29780 j29781 Bronze inscriptions b19855 b19856 b19857 b19858 b19859 b19860 b19861 b19862 b19863 b19864 b19865 b19866 b19867 b19868 b19869 b19870 b19871 b19872 b19873 b19874 b19875 b19876 b19877 b19878 b19879 b19880 b19881 b19882 b19883 Small seal script s10919 Transcribed ancient scripts L34450 L34451 L14821 L14822 L14823 L14824 L14825 L14826 L14827 L14828
References: Mostly from Richard Sears' Chinese Etymology site (authorisation), which in turn draws data from various collections of ancient forms of Chinese characters, including: Shuowen Jiezi (small seal), Jinwen Bian (bronze inscriptions), Liushutong (Liushutong characters) and Yinxu Jiaguwen Bian (oracle bone script).

Characters in the same phonetic series (五) (Zhengzhang, 2003)

	Old Chinese
吾
衙
鼯
浯
珸
郚
齬
鯃
娪
梧
峿
五
伍
寤
啎
晤
悟
逜
窹
捂
鋙
語
圄
敔

Originally written 𠄡, consisting of 㐅 with a bar on the top and bottom. One hypothesis explains that this may have meant five because when counting on a single hand, one first counts to five and then crosses back the other way to ten.

In 韋, the upper component (𫝀) is the stylization of a footprint, hence it is similar but unrelated to 五.

Etymology 1

ဓမ္မတာ ကဵု အခိုက်ကၞာ		五
alternative forms		伍 financial 㐅𠄡𫝀

From ကြုက်-တိဗိတ်-အခိုက်ကၞာ *l-ŋaʔ (“five”).