Another striking phonetic-loan etymology. Oracle bone 來 originally pictured a stalk of barley with grain heads — barley was an "imported" grain that came to ancient North China from elsewhere, and the verb "to come / arrive" was a natural metaphor. The character was hijacked phonetically for "come", and the original "barley" meaning got relocated to a new character 麥 (mài / mugi, barley). Same pattern as 何 (load → what) in the previous batch.

Three forms: 繁體 來 / 新字体 来 / 简体 来. Japanese and simplified Chinese both adopted the simpler 来.

Mandarin: lái, rising 2nd tone. 来 is a foundational verb of motion: 来 (lái, to come), 来自 (láizì, to come from), 来到 (láidào, to arrive at), 起来 (qǐlái, get up — directional complement), 出来 (chūlái, come out). Mandarin uses 来 as a directional complement attached to verbs to indicate motion toward the speaker — a grammatical pattern that doesn't exist in English. 走过来 (zǒu guòlái) = "walk over here", 拿来 (nálái) = "bring it here".

Japanese: on-reading ライ (rai) for compounds — 来年 (rainen, next year), 来週 (raishū, next week), 来月 (raigetsu, next month), 未来 (mirai, future), 将来 (shōrai, future / prospects), 以来 (irai, since). Note Japanese uses 来 for "the next" time-unit (来年 = next year), in contrast to Mandarin 明年 (next year). Kun-reading く.る (ku.ru, to come) is the main verb. 来る (kuru) is one of only TWO truly irregular verbs in Japanese (the other is する suru — to do); it conjugates as くる/きます/こない/きた — pure memorization.

Memory aid: barley fields ripe at harvest — what comes to the village is what comes home.