緣
Symbols Relationships
bond
ㄩㄢˊ yuán
Two versions of the same picture, and both are free with no account and no watermark. The first has no background at all, which is the one to send your artist — but a phone or computer photo viewer set to dark will show black strokes on dark grey and it can look like nothing downloaded. If that happens, use the second one: identical characters on a plain white background. Either way you get the characters on their own — the square and the faint guide lines you see above are not in the file. Each character is 1000px, so a two-character download is 2000×1000, and the script and layout are the ones you picked.
Script
Characters
Same in both
Layout
Rubbing mode: white on black, as a stone rubbing. The download is unaffected.
What holds two people together. Chinese usually names the fate that brought them rather than the tie itself.
Before you commit
Choose with care緣 names the fate that brings people together, not the bond that keeps them. It is used of chance meetings and of who you end up with, and it carries no sense of effort.
JapaneseDo not use 絆 for bond unless you want the Japanese reading. As kizuna it is a beautiful word for human ties, but a Chinese reader sees to trip up or to be entangled.
At small sizesFifteen strokes with a silk radical on the left. The right side is busy, so this needs moderate size to stay open.
Meaning
Fated connection; the affinity that brings people together.
The word Chinese reaches for when two people were meant to meet.
Other characters for “bond”
What to do next
Pick the script and layout you want above, download the PNG, and send that file to your artist. Ask them to work from the file rather than redrawing the character freehand — that is where strokes go missing.
Related concepts