The bronze script of character Temple is
The head 广 is a broad flat space in front of cliff, we see this in character Broad（Post 316). There is a character Sun - the circle with a dot inside, over and below it are grass. The right is a river, we see the water drops.
In a broad space near a river, when the sun is rising just over the grass (very early morning), the King offers sacrifices to gods or ancestors. The character means "The place for King to hold worship activity". As time passed, it becomes to "The place for worship activity". It is obvious open space.
Back to 3000+ years ago, there was no religious. After religious appeared, the character is used to represent "The place for the religious activities". It is a building where people could have religious activity every day.
The big seal script of the character is
very similar to bronze script.
The smaal seal script of the character is
The "grass" below the sun is changed, the reason is unknown. The right "river" is changed to "boat", which is reasonable because "boat" is used in "river".
The clerical script of the character is
The two + over and under the 日 (Sun) are grass, which is same as older scripts. The right part is 月 （Moon), which is nothing to do with "river" or "boat". Dictionary of Pictography thinks that people just miswrote because “Boat" and "Moon" are similar in writing. I agree.
The song typeface for traditional character Temple is
廟
Almost same as the clerical script.
The song typeface for simplified character Temple is
庙
Why is it changed to that? I don't know and didn't find explanation.
Its Pinyin is Miao4.
庙 is the name for most Chinese native religious temples, there is another character 寺 (Post 437) is the name specific for Buddhism temples. People normally use "寺庙“ (Put the two characters together) to mean all religious temples.
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