子
Symbols Relationships
son
ㄗˇ zǐ
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.
A male child. The obvious character means child in general, and only the context around it makes it a son.
Before you commit
Choose with care子 does several jobs at once: child, the first branch of the zodiac cycle, an honorific in 孔子, and an empty suffix in words like 桌子. Alone it is vague.
Cultural noteIn classical usage 子 is a title of respect for a teacher — Confucius is 孔子. Some readers will see the philosopher before they see a son.
At small sizesThree strokes. About as safe as a character gets, small or on a curve, though it looks very plain standing alone.
Meaning
Child, son; also a noun suffix, and an honorific for a master.
The classical word for son, though most modern uses just mean child.
Other characters for “son”
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