永
Symbols Memory
farewell forever
別
ㄩㄥˇ ㄅㄧㄝˊ yǒng bié
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.
The parting where both sides know there will be no next time. Chinese has a specific word for it.
Before you commit
Choose with care別 alone is unreliable here. In modern Chinese it most often means do not, as in 別走, so a single 別 will not be read as farewell.
At small sizesTwelve strokes over two open characters. Comfortable small, and the pair sits well stacked vertically.
Cultural note永別 is final — it is what you say over a death, or over something that is gone for good. For a friend moving abroad you would say 道別; 告別式 is the word for a funeral service, so 告別 leans that way too.
Meaning
A final parting; to part forever, usually by death.
The precise word for a goodbye with no hello after it.
Other characters for “farewell forever”
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