銘
Symbols Memory
epitaph
ㄇㄧㄥˊ míng
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.
Words cut into a grave marker. Chinese has a precise term for it, and a single character meaning an inscription meant to last.
Before you commit
Choose with care銘 does not by itself mean grave. It is any lasting inscription, including the 座右銘 people keep as a personal motto - often the better reading to invite.
At small sizesFourteen strokes with the metal radical on the left. Dense but well structured, and readable at moderate size.
Cultural noteOn its own, 銘 calls up 座右銘, the maxim kept at the right of one's seat, more readily than 墓誌銘, the epitaph. For the grave sense you need the whole word.
Meaning
An inscription cut into metal or stone; by extension, fixed in the memory.
Used of words meant to outlast the person who set them down.
Other characters for “epitaph”
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