Mao of the Zhou enfeoffment, and the brush that every schoolchild learns to hold.
Say it in Mandarin: máo
How worn the ink looks — 0% is a fresh stamp, 100% is eroded stone.
Preview only. The downloaded PNG is 1024×1024.
From the Ji (姬) house of Zhou, through Mao Shu Zheng — Mao Shu — the younger brother of King Wen, enfeoffed at Mao; his descendants kept the town’s name.
In a later age the clan’s most famous name took a pen in hand instead of a penknife, and the character that had meant a pelt ended up meaning the writing on paper. The simplest seal of the family: four strokes, and nothing to hide.
The surname: From the Ji (姬) house of Zhou, through Mao Shu Zheng — Mao Shu — the younger brother of King Wen, enfeoffed at Mao; his descendants kept the town’s name. In a later age the clan’s most famous name took a pen in hand instead of a penknife, and the character that had meant a pelt ended up meaning the writing on paper. The simplest seal of the family: four strokes, and nothing to hide. Full 毛 page →
Single-surname seal: the brush and the pelt, the same stroke.
Mao is written 毛 in Mandarin. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of Mao 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.
毛 breaks down as 毛 (máo) — Four strokes and a hair. The oracle bone draws an animal’s pelt — the one covering that decides what a hunter is. The seal note we would put under it: Single-surname seal: the brush and the pelt, the same stroke.
Pinyin: máo — 毛 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. 毛 (máo) is one of the recorded Chinese surnames. From the Ji (姬) house of Zhou, through Mao Shu Zheng — Mao Shu — the younger brother of King Wen, enfeoffed at Mao; his descendants kept the town’s name. In a later age the clan’s most famous name took a pen in hand instead of a penknife, and the character that had meant a pelt ended up meaning the writing on paper. The simplest seal of the family: four strokes, and nothing to hide. The full account, with the character’s own etymology, is on the 毛 surname page — and that lineage is the reason a Western name can borrow the character for a surname at all.
毛 is built from 毛 — 毛 (máo) — and no other curated name on this site shares that combination, because each entry is built around its own sound and its own meaning rather than recycled syllables. Names that start the same way as Mao are linked at the foot of this page.
From the Ji (姬) house of Zhou, through Mao Shu Zheng — Mao Shu — the younger brother of King Wen, enfeoffed at Mao; his descendants kept the town’s name. In a later age the clan’s most famous name took a pen in hand instead of a penknife, and the character that had meant a pelt ended up meaning the writing on paper. The full account — the etymology, the bearers, and why this site renders it as 毛 — 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 Mao: they begin like Mao.
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.
Yes — free, no login, no watermark. Ad-supported.
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.