Describing Characters: AB的A/B When trying to describe what specific character one is talking about, people often use the following method:


  AB的A/B


For instance:

包: 书包的包

宇: 宇宙的宇

My questions:


What is this thing (method(?)) called?
How can one know what the most common word is for a certain character? (i.e.: if I want to tell someone that the charcater I'm talking about is 冰, how can I know what word (perhaps even chengyu) is clearest to describe it?)
Are there any lists that contain these types of combinations? Preferably the most common?
How can people learn to know these for when others are describing their own names or other things?
"defining character by common compound word"
there are frequency lists for both words and characters
Wenlin, http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Mandarin_Frequency_lists 等等
In practice, one just uses a common and distinct word, not necessarily the most common word (书记 in the case of 书)