根
Symbols Nature
root
ㄍㄣ gēn
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.
What anchors a plant underground, and by extension origin, cause and where a person is from.
Before you commit
Choose with care根 covers literal roots and family roots equally well, which is unusually convenient. But it also means root cause of a problem, so context does some work.
Pairs well with根源 root and source. 落葉歸根, fallen leaves return to the roots, is the idiom for going home at the end of a life.
At small sizesTen strokes, evenly split left and right. Holds up well small.
Meaning
Root of a plant; also root cause, basis, and family roots.
Both senses English uses sit naturally in this one character.
Other characters for “root”
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