祖
Symbols Relationships
grandfather
父
ㄗㄨˇ ㄈㄨˋ zǔ fù
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 same split as grandmother: the father's father and the mother's father are different words in Chinese.
Before you commit
Choose with care祖父 and 爺爺 are the father's father; 外公 and 外祖父 are the mother's. Choosing the wrong pair is an immediately visible error.
Cultural note公 in 外公 is a respectful word for an older man, and also means public — one of many characters doing two unrelated jobs.
At small sizesFourteen strokes over two characters, but 父 is only four, so the pair looks uneven side by side. A vertical stack balances it.
Meaning
Grandfather on the father's side; the formal written term.
The written word for the paternal grandfather, used in records.
Other characters for “grandfather”
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