靈
Symbols Memory
spirit of the dead
ㄌㄧㄥˊ líng
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 is left of a person once the body is gone. Traditional Chinese belief gives a person more than one soul.
Before you commit
Choose with care靈 is very broad. It also means clever, responsive and effective - 靈驗 is a prayer that works - so without context it does not say the dead.
At small sizesTwenty-four strokes, one of the densest characters you could pick. It has to be large or it becomes a solid black patch.
Cultural noteTradition gives a person both 魂 and 魄: one rises at death, one stays with the body. Funeral language uses 靈 for the spirit being honoured.
Meaning
Spirit; the soul of the dead; also efficacious, uncanny.
The character on funeral altars - 靈堂, 靈位, 靈魂.
Other characters for “spirit of the dead”
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