燕
Symbols Animals
swallow
ㄧㄢˋ yàn
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 swallow is the bird of spring and of homecoming in Chinese, though the character has several other lives.
Before you commit
Choose with care燕 also names the ancient state of Yan and the Beijing region, and pronounced yan it can mean a feast. Context usually settles it, but alone it is not purely the bird.
At small sizes16 strokes with four dots at the base and a wide crossbar. The dots close into a solid line if it is scaled down too far.
Cultural noteSwallows nesting under the eaves are a good sign, meaning a household is settled and welcoming. Knocking down a swallow nest is considered genuinely unlucky.
Meaning
Swallow, the bird. Also a place name and a surname.
A handsome, well-balanced character with strong seasonal associations.
Other characters for “swallow”
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