Chinese Radicals (3) Three drops - 三点水

The shell bone script, big seal and small seal script for Three drops are just character Water

or 

for example,

or

The left is Liquor, the right is Oil, both are small seal script. Both have Water character on the left.

So there is no Three drop radical or Three drop radial is same as Water character in shell bone, big seal, and small seal script.

When clerical script was used, people wrote Water like the following,

But people had never used it as side radical in character, instead people first tried to turn the small seal script Water to horizontal

The character became like 

which has problem: is it one character or two?

Therefore, people simplified the left horizontal Water to 

which is narrowed the Water, so people could write Oil as

It could be put in a square of the same size with any other characters, people are sure that it is one character, not two.

Because it is so different from the character Water, so people call it Radical Water, which is really from character Water. The three drops standard script, song typeface later on have the similar form.