恆
Symbols Virtues
perseverance
ㄏㄥˊ héng
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 at something long after the first effort. Chinese puts the weight on constancy.
Before you commit
Choose with care恆 alone reads as constant or permanent rather than perseverance. 恆心, a constant heart, is the noun a Chinese reader expects.
Pairs well with恆 plus 心 gives 恆心. 持之以恆 is the standard four-character phrase for keeping at a thing.
At small sizesNine strokes and open in structure, so it scales down well. The traditional 恆 is a little denser than the simplified form, so keep it above roughly two centimetres.
Meaning
Constant, lasting, unchanging.
The character behind 恆心, the sustained will to keep going.
Other characters for “perseverance”
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