鴿
Symbols Animals
pigeon
ㄍㄜ gē
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 character serves for pigeon and dove; what varies is which modifier you attach.
Before you commit
Choose with careThere is no way in Chinese to say pigeon and rule out dove. The character is the same; only the modifier shifts the picture.
Pairs well with鴿 with 信 gives 信鴿, the homing pigeon, which reads as always finding the way home. It is a far more meaningful choice than the bare character.
At small sizes17 strokes. Legible at moderate scale but the bird radical needs space; not ideal for a very small placement.
Meaning
Pigeon or dove. One character for the whole family.
The base character used in every compound for these birds.
Other characters for “pigeon”
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