銘
Symbols Memory
never forget
ㄇㄧㄥˊ míng
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.
Keeping something so firmly that it cannot slip away. Chinese reaches for engraving rather than for holding.
Before you commit
Choose with care銘 is literally an inscription. Readers take the memory sense easily enough, but in isolation it can simply read as text engraved on bronze.
At small sizesFourteen strokes with the metal radical on the left. Workable but not delicate - fine linework fills in the left side first.
Cultural note座右銘 is the motto kept beside your seat, and 銘記在心 is to engrave something on the heart. Both explain why this character works here.
Meaning
To engrave; an inscription cut into metal or stone.
The memory metaphor Chinese actually uses - cut in, not merely kept.
Other characters for “never forget”
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