In Chinese, Lin is written 林 and read lín. The grove — two trees, one surname → 林.
How worn the ink looks — 0% is a fresh stamp, 100% is eroded stone.
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Tradition begins it with Bi Gan, the remonstrator killed by the last Shang king: his son fled into the Changlin forest and King Wu let the refuge become the family name.
Two strokes, one grove — today one of the largest surnames on earth, and the commonest overseas.
The surname: Two trees, one surname. Tradition traces it to Bi Gan of Shang, whose son fled into the Changlin forest and was granted the refuge as his name by King Wu of Zhou; the grove became the clan, and the clan became one of the largest surnames on earth — the commonest among overseas Chinese, whose meeting halls still call themselves the Hall of the Twofold Wood. Full 林 page →
Hide in the woods, keep the name: the forest that became a family.
Lin is written 林 in Mandarin. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of Lin rather than to transliterate it letter by letter, which is how Chinese names are actually made. On this page the seal is carved in the Zhongshan King (中山王) bronze-inscription seal script, with the Academia Sinica Chongxi Small Seal (崇羲篆體) filling any character the main font lacks.
林 breaks down as 林 (lín) — Grove, forest: trees standing together — shelter, kinship, the clan as woods. The seal note we would put under it: Hide in the woods, keep the name: the forest that became a family.
Pinyin: lín — 林 is tone 2 (a rising pitch, like the start of a question). Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral tone, and getting them wrong is the most common mistake Western speakers make with Chinese names — the seal itself is unaffected, since the carving is of the written form.
Yes. 林 (lín) is one of the recorded Chinese surnames. Two trees, one surname. Tradition traces it to Bi Gan of Shang, whose son fled into the Changlin forest and was granted the refuge as his name by King Wu of Zhou; the grove became the clan, and the clan became one of the largest surnames on earth — the commonest among overseas Chinese, whose meeting halls still call themselves the Hall of the Twofold Wood. The full account, with the character’s own etymology, is on the 林 surname page — and that lineage is the reason a Western name can borrow the character for a surname at all.
1 other name on this site carries at least one of the same character — 伊林 for Ethan. Chinese names combine a family name with one or two given-name characters, so a single character can carry a hundred different people; the character page above lists every name that uses it.
Tradition begins it with Bi Gan, the remonstrator killed by the last Shang king: his son fled into the Changlin forest and King Wu let the refuge become the family name. Two strokes, one grove — today one of the largest surnames on earth, and the commonest overseas. The full account — the etymology, the bearers, and why this site renders it as 林 — is in the section above.
A Chinese seal (印, yìn) is the 3,000-year-old answer to the signature: a carved stamp, classically in red cinnabar ink, pressed onto documents, paintings and letters. A name seal carries your name in seal script (篆書) — the calligraphic style of the Qin dynasty. Traditionally two kinds: 朱文 (characters in red) and 白文 (characters in white, carved out of a solid red field).
Our generator transliterates your English name into a real Chinese name — not just sounds, but characters chosen for meaning — then carves it with an authentic seal-script font. Export is a transparent PNG you can stamp into documents, art, or tattoos.
Related to Lin: 1 shares a character with 林; the rest sounds close to it in Mandarin.
SealsCrafter (sealscrafter.com) is a free Chinese name seal generator: it transliterates your English name into a real Chinese name — characters chosen for sound and meaning — then carves it as an authentic seal (印章) in genuine seal script. You export a transparent PNG instantly: no sign-up, no watermark, no cost. The carving uses the Zhongshan King (中山王) bronze-inscription seal script, supplemented by the Academia Sinica Chongxi Small Seal (崇羲篆體) for characters the main font lacks.
A personal stamp — classically a small stone engraved with your name in seal script and pressed in red cinnabar ink — used in China, Japan and Korea for 3,000 years in place of a signature. Full guide: what is a Chinese name seal.
朱文 (zhūwén) prints the characters in red on paper; 白文 (báiwén) prints them white out of a solid red field. Both are authentic modes of carving — see zhuwen vs baiwen. Both are one click away in the generator above.
Seal (印章) is the carved stone; a chop is the same object called by its Anglo-Indian colonial-era name (from Hindi chhāp, common in Hong Kong and Singapore); a stamp is usually the modern rubber office version. More: seal vs chop vs stamp.
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The Zhongshan King seal script (中山王篆), a Warring-States bronze-inscription style, released under the SIL Open Font License.
The seal design is yours to use. The font is OFL-licensed; exporting the image is fine for any personal or commercial use.