宗
Symbols Relationships
clan
ㄗㄨㄥ zōng
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.
An extended family sharing an ancestor. Chinese distinguishes the ancestral line from the wider family.
Before you commit
Choose with care宗 has a strong second life meaning a school or sect, as in 禪宗, Zen. It also means the main or principal thing, in 宗旨. Clan is not its only reading.
At small sizesEight strokes under a roof radical. Clean, symmetrical and dependable at small sizes.
Cultural noteThe clan was a real institution with halls, land and written genealogies, and in parts of southern China and Taiwan it still is. 宗 carries that formality rather than a loose family feeling.
Meaning
The ancestral line; a clan; a school or sect.
The character in 宗族 and in 宗祠, the clan's ancestral hall.
Other characters for “clan”
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