悼
Symbols Memory
in memoriam
ㄉㄠˋ dào
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.
Set down in memory of someone who died. Chinese has a character used for exactly this and almost nothing else.
Before you commit
Choose with care悼 is strictly funerary. It will not stretch to a lost job, a lost love or a closed chapter - a reader will understand a death and nothing else.
Pairs well with哀悼 for expressing condolence, 追悼 for a memorial held in someone's honour. Both are standard and instantly understood.
At small sizesEleven strokes with a narrow heart radical on the left. Reads well at moderate size if you keep the right side open.
Meaning
To mourn; to grieve for someone who has died.
Used only of the dead - precise, and unmistakable in tone.
Other characters for “in memoriam”
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