Chinese seal generator

Enter your name in Chinese characters: the generator composes a seal, 印章 yìnzhāng, in 方篆 fāngzhuàn script, in two versions, to download as a transparent PNG.

You do not have a Chinese name yet? Get your name in Chinese characters

A real seal, carved by hand

The seal above is an image, and it costs nothing. If it is the object you want, Xiaoqian carves her seals by hand in the stones meant for that (Qingtian, Shoushan, Hongshi, Dongshi and others): she draws the composition first, then cuts it with the knife. The video shows an extract of it, and the whole job takes far longer than one imagines.

She also translates your first name and family name into Chinese, which settles the problem of the over-long name: you then carry a real Chinese name on your seal instead of a transcription. She sells the seal paste as well, 印泥 yìnní, without which the stone stays idle. Seals from 26,90 €, shipped from France, no customs fees within the European Union.

A seal in Qingtian stone left in its natural shape, beside its oval impression

A seal topped with a carved horse and its red tassel, beside its impression

Two pieces from the shop: a Qingtian stone left in its rough shape, and a seal topped with a carved horse. Every stone is unique, and its impression is shown beside it.

See the hand-carved seals

The Chinese seal

A seal, 印章 yìnzhāng, is the carved stone that does in China what a signature does here. It closes a letter, validates a contract, and above all it signs a painting or a calligraphy. Pressed into the seal paste, 印泥 yìnní, it leaves the deep red that this generator tries to reproduce. Pastes differ by what goes into them, and the most sought after are made with cinnabar, 朱砂 zhūshā.

The characters are set in columns read from top to bottom, and the columns run from right to left. When the name does not fill the grid, three characters in a square of four for instance, the free box takes the character 印 yìn, « seal » (old seals also use 之印 zhī yìn, but the generator sticks to a single character). It is not padding: 李天翔印 reads literally « seal of Li Tianxiang ».

The script used here is the 方篆 fāngzhuàn: 方 « square » + 篆 « seal script » ⟶ the seal script squared off so that every character fills its box exactly. On a round or an oval seal the 圆篆 yuánzhuàn is preferred, its strokes following the curve. A Chinese person today can barely decipher either of them, and that is on purpose. A seal is looked at first, and read afterwards.

Two styles have coexisted for centuries. The yin seal, 白文 báiwén, literally « white writing », has its characters hollowed out: the knife removes the strokes, which print blank in a red field. The yang seal, 朱文 zhūwén, « vermilion writing », does exactly the opposite. Painters often own one of each and change according to the work, or press both on the same painting.

An image is not a seal, though, and it is worth saying. What the generator cannot do is precisely what makes a carved seal worth owning: the accidents of the knife, the border deliberately chipped, the way a carver tightens one character to let the next one breathe. A font, for its part, always does the same thing.

One practical point to finish. A Western first name transcribed by sound quickly runs to four or five characters, and the seal turns into a crowded grid that means nothing to a Chinese reader. If you come from the Chinese first name page, take a family name of one character and a given name of one or two instead. That is what everyone does in China.