歸
Symbols Relationships
homecoming
ㄍㄨㄟ guī
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.
Returning to where you belong. The literary character for it is more resonant than the everyday one.
Before you commit
Choose with care歸 is literary. Modern speech uses 回, and 歸 appears mainly in set phrases and in writing, so alone it reads as elevated or old rather than everyday.
At small sizesEighteen strokes in a crowded left-right split. It needs real size to keep the left element open.
Cultural note落葉歸根, fallen leaves return to the root, is the phrase for coming home at the end of a life or being buried in one's native place. 歸 carries that finality as well as a happy return.
Meaning
To return home; to go back to where one belongs.
The character with homecoming built into it, and the one poetry uses.
Other characters for “homecoming”
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