Father and Son
Lezleigh from the UK (!) requested the Chinese translation for “father and son” as in “there must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power, the other at independence”… profoundnessnessness, er ness (yes, I make up words) at it’s best… *light bulb goes off*…
… where essentially the first character means “father” and the second character means “son.”
Want to see these characters embroidered on a women’s or unisex t-shirt? Or on a women’s or unisex tank top? Click the appropriate preceding link. Got a translation request of your own? Contact me!
March 1st, 2007 at 11:50 am
Why is it that when I look up the Kanji symbol for son I always find the symbol shown here but it follows another symbol. I went to kanjisite.com and was unable to find this symbol anywhere on their site. It also shows this symbol as the symbol for “child”.
March 1st, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Chinese is mostly a context-driven language. The character by itself can mean “child”… but in the context of “father and son” it means “son.”
It’s similar to the English word “counterpart”… if you break it out, “counter” by itself then means something completely different (e.g. kitchen counter, bar counter, etc.) than when put in the context of “counterpart.”
Also FYI, in English we call them “words.” Similarly, in Chinese we call them “characters” not “symbols.”
March 2nd, 2007 at 3:41 am
Excellent, now say that I want to get the two characters for “father” and “son” to show that I am a father and a son….. would that be different than getting the characters for “father and son”??
Also I used your site for my last tattoo which I got the character for “brother.” Just wanted to let you know I think this is a great site.
August 1st, 2007 at 4:40 pm
To represent being both a father and son, you would need to insert a character in front of each character above that essentially translates as “also”…
… and glad you like the site!… help spread the word!