命
Symbols Life
destiny
ㄇㄧㄥˋ mìng
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 is allotted to a life, and in the Chinese version the invisible thread that brings people together.
Before you commit
Choose with care命 on its own reads as life or as an order at least as readily as fate: 救命 means save my life, 命令 means a command. Write 命運 if fate is the point.
At small sizes命 is eight strokes and prints cleanly. 緣 at fifteen is considerably denser.
Cultural note緣 or 緣分 is what Chinese speakers actually invoke about meetings and love. It says two people were linked, without claiming anyone planned it, and it is used constantly.
Meaning
Fate, life, an allotted span; also an order or command.
The core character, though it means life and command as much as destiny.
Other characters for “destiny”
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.
Read more
This character is one of the ten in a longer piece on what a character carries beyond its dictionary meaning.
Related concepts