What is a Chinese name seal? The signature you can hold
A name seal (姓名章) is a small stone whose face is engraved with a person’s name, pressed in red cinnabar ink and stamped where a Westerner would sign. For three thousand years that print was the signature.
A seal is identity, not trinket
Chinese seals divide into two lineages. Official seals (官印) carried delegated authority — the seal of a magistrate or a ministry, lost at your peril. Private seals (私印、姓名章) carried a name: stamped on documents, contracts, family registers, letters, paintings and colophons.
Both ran on the same logic: a seal is hard to fake because it is carved, three-dimensional and personal. The red cinnabar print is archival — a thousand-year-old scroll can still show bright red seal impressions where the surrounding writing has faded.
Why the name is written in seal script
When Qin unified China in 221 BCE it standardised the writing; the small seal script (小篆) became the first national hand and the permanent script of seals. Clerical script soon replaced it for daily use, but seals never switched — which is why every name seal in China, Japan and Korea is still carved in seal script.
The seals of the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) became the canon. Once soapstone made carving-with-a-knife practical in the Ming era (14th century onward), seal cutting (篆刻) became a high art with celebrated masters — and collector’s stones to this day.
What a proper name seal contains
Two or three Chinese characters — a full personal name, surname first. Carvers squeezing a three-character name into a square grid classically completed it with an old filler (之印, 印 or 之) instead of leaving a blank quadrant. The border is often chipped on purpose; the weathering is part of the art. The characters print either red-on-paper (朱文) or white-out-of-red (白文).
An English name gets on a seal the way it gets into Chinese conversation: it is first turned into a Chinese name — the established transliteration, or a curated one chosen for sound and meaning. This generator pairs each name with real characters and explains every one of them.
Your name, seal-ready
The engraving here follows the Zhongshan King (中山王) bronze-inscription school of seal script, supplemented for rare characters by the Academia Sinica’s Chongxi Small Seal, and exports a transparent PNG you can print, stamp into a document, or hand a stone carver as the artwork.
More seal guides
FAQ
What is SealsCrafter?
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.
What is a Chinese name seal?
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.
What is the difference between 朱文 and 白文?
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.
Is it a seal, a chop or a stamp?
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.
Is it really free?
Yes — free, no login, no watermark. Ad-supported.
What font does it use?
The Zhongshan King seal script (中山王篆), a Warring-States bronze-inscription style, released under the SIL Open Font License.
Can I use the PNG commercially?
The seal design is yours to use. The font is OFL-licensed; exporting the image is fine for any personal or commercial use.