公
Symbols Animals
rooster
雞
ㄍㄨㄥ ㄐㄧ gōng jī
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 rooster: the bird that calls up the dawn, and drives off what moved in the dark.
Before you commit
Choose with care雞 alone does not mean rooster; it means chicken. Worse, in Mandarin slang 雞 is a common word for a prostitute. Do not use it as a standalone tattoo.
At small sizes公 is 4 strokes and 雞 is 18. The pair is badly unbalanced; 酉 at 7 strokes is the clean small option.
Cultural noteThe crowing cock ends the night and was believed to disperse ghosts, so the rooster stands for diligence and for driving off evil.
Meaning
Rooster; a male chicken.
The only way to say rooster and not chicken in general.
Other characters for “rooster”
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