A 2,000-year-old Chinese art, made yours
In China, a seal is a signature — pressing it means “this is me, and I keep my word.” Get a Chinese name from your own, carve it into a seal and hide a QR code in it: scan it, and a scroll unrolls with your wish.
Seal Studio
Carve your name or a wish into a seal: pick a style and a script to get a seal with real stone texture. Turn on the hidden QR code and write down your wish — a scan unrolls a scroll inscribed with it, and your seal enters our online register.
传承创新
This seal can also hide a QR code — scan it with your phone camera to unroll its very own scroll.
View the scroll on this device See everyone’s wish sealsChinese names
Chinese has no alphabet, so a name can’t be spelled out letter by letter. It is rebuilt either by sound — each syllable becomes a character that sounds alike — or by meaning. The studio gives you both, and checks every character.
Two suggestions follow the way Chinese media write foreign names, using the standard transliterations of the Xinhua News Agency: Michael becomes 迈克尔 (mài kè ěr) and Jordan 乔丹 (qiáo dān). These characters are chosen for their sound, not their meaning.
Four suggestions are names in the Chinese style: two or three characters whose sound echoes yours and whose meaning is positive. They often start with a real Chinese surname close to your family name, because Chinese names put the family name first.
An AI model proposes the names, but every reading and meaning you see comes from the Unicode Han Database (Unihan), not from the AI. We only use the 6,763 common characters of the GB 2312 standard and filter out characters with unlucky meanings.
Planning something permanent, like a tattoo? Ask a native Chinese speaker to look at your name first.
A Chinese seal — 印章 (yìnzhāng), often called a “chop” in English — is a carved stamp printed in red cinnabar paste. In China it works like a signature: for thousands of years officials, artists and ordinary people have stamped one on documents, paintings and letters to say “this is mine”.
Type your name in Latin letters into the studio above and choose “Find my Chinese name”. You get six suggestions — two standard transliterations and four meaning-based names — each with the pinyin and the meaning of every character. Choose “Carve this name” to put it on a seal.
Yes. Getting a Chinese name, carving a digital seal, downloading it as a PNG and hiding a QR code in it are all free. Only a real stone seal costs money (US$299).
Baiwen (白文, “white characters”) seals have the characters cut into the stone, so they print white on a red square. Zhuwen (朱文, “red characters”) seals leave the characters raised, so they print red on the paper. Both are traditional.
Song is a clear printed style that is easy to read. Brush script looks hand-written. Seal script (篆书 zhuànshū) is the ancient style traditionally carved on seals; it uses traditional character forms, so a simplified name can look quite different.
When you switch it on, dots in the seal’s stone texture are arranged so that phone cameras read the seal as a QR code. Scanning it opens the seal’s own ink-landscape scroll with your wish. It scans best from a screen or a printed image; a seal stamped by hand on paper is much harder to scan.
Japanese hanko (also called inkan) come from the Chinese seal tradition. In Japan they are still used every day for banking and contracts, and a person’s official seal is registered with the local government. In China, companies still use official seals, but personal name seals today are mostly used by artists and as keepsakes.
No. Seals made here, on screen or in stone, are keepsakes and a way to express yourself — not legal signatures, company seals or proof of identity.
Yes. A seal carver can carve your design in Shoushan or Qingtian stone for US$299, including express shipping, with a hand-carved side inscription, seal paste and a gift box. Reservations are open now; ordering opens in mid-November.
The name is sent to an AI model to make suggestions, and the suggestions for each name are cached for 30 days without being linked to you. If you register a seal, we keep its wish and original name so its scroll page can show them. See our Privacy Policy for details.
History
From marks on pottery to tokens of trust in trade, and on to the scholar's art of seal carving, the seal has accompanied Chinese civilization for nearly four thousand years.
01
Chinese seals have a history of nearly four thousand years. Early seals were used mainly in pottery making; as commerce grew, they became tokens of trust in the exchange of goods. By the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, seals inscribed with official titles or personal names were in common use.
02
The Qin and Han were a pivotal stage. The Qin dynasty set strict rules for the names, forms, scripts and use of seals, and the Han inherited and continued these institutions. Official and private seals were widespread in the Han; their seal script was square and robust, their layouts rigorous and their styles varied — an unprecedented golden age in the history of seals.
03
During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, as papermaking flourished, government documents moved from bamboo slips to paper and silk, and seals shifted from impressing clay to stamping with ink paste. After the Sui unified China, the new style of official seals was fixed as an institution, and official seals began to use red-character (zhuwen) carving.
04
After the Tang and Song, official seals grew uniform and rigid, while scholar-officials began to take an interest in seal making themselves, elevating it into the art of seal carving. The Yuan dynasty pioneered carving seals in soft agalmatolite stone, opening the way for personal artistic expression. In the Ming and Qing, schools of seal carving flourished and the art reached its glorious peak.
非物质文化遗产
The art of Chinese seal engraving was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Jinshi seal carving was added to China's fourth list of National Intangible Cultural Heritage.
As seal creations have grown, stamp-collecting at travel destinations has become a craze loved by visitors — posts on topics like “stamp sharing” on Xiaohongshu (RedNote) have passed 200 million views.
Art
After the Tang and Song dynasties, seals became an important way for Chinese literati and artists to express their aesthetic ideals — ranked alongside poetry, calligraphy and painting as one of China's four traditional arts.
Today, Chinese seal art is a traditional handcraft that unites calligraphy, painting and carving, with a unique artistic charm and deep cultural value.
Seal culture holds a wealth of historical, cultural and artistic information. It is an essential part of traditional Chinese culture and carries the spirit of the Chinese nation.
A seal is the perfect union of metal and stone, carving and calligraphy. Within a tiny square, the arrangement of characters, the weight of lines and the contrast of red and white create a unique artistic charm of great aesthetic value.
In traditional Chinese culture, a seal stands for integrity and a promise kept. Whether on official documents, contracts or works of painting and calligraphy, a seal carries important legal and moral meaning.
Seals come in two basic forms. Baiwen (white-character) seals are carved in intaglio: the characters are cut away and print white on red, solemn and weighty. Zhuwen (red-character) seals are carved in relief: the characters stand out and print red on white, clear and lively. Official seals adopted red characters from the Sui dynasty on — and this interplay of red and white lies at the heart of seal aesthetics.
Innovation
Building on the traditional art of the seal, we innovate in three dimensions: technology, content and form.
01技术创新
China's first full-color seals: museum treasures and city landmarks rendered in rich color within a single square — one stamp creates a finished picture.
02内容创新
Thousands of years of city history, national treasures from museum collections and great engineering feats, distilled into seal series with written stories — every seal has a tale to tell.
03形式创新
Stamped onto scrolls, engraved booklets, fridge magnets, postcards and desk calendars — from stamp-collecting to keepsake gifts, seals become something to use, collect and give.
Projects
From city tourism to museums, from landmark engineering to international events, seal creations are being seen, stamped and treasured by more and more people.
We distill thousands of years of a city's history into a dozen or so carefully designed seals in soft Morandi tones, each with a short written story, paired with several custom full-color landmark seals. This blend of past and present gives visitors a whole new cultural-tourism experience and has been a hit with the market. Chengdu, Tianjin, Xuzhou, Beijing… more and more cities are joining this time-travel journey through seals.
During China's National Day holiday in 2025, the “Stamping National Treasures into Time” seal collection went on sale at the Chengdu Museum for the first time. China's first full-color seals print 12 classic artifacts from the museum's collection onto scrolls, engraved booklets, fridge magnets, postcards and desk calendars. It quickly became one of the museum's most loved and best-selling products — and the scroll stamped with the full set of color seals sold out in under three days.
“Pillars of the Nation: Three Gorges Seals” and the “Three Gorges Dam Panorama Seals” draw on the theme “History — Engineering Epic — Humanity and Nature.” In the art form of woodcut-style print seals, they recreate the majestic landscape of the Three Gorges Dam and the enterprising spirit behind it, creating distinctive cultural gifts for enterprises and local governments.
Our scroll of Chengdu full-color landmark seals was chosen by the organizers of the 2nd Golden Panda Awards (2025) as the official gift for Chinese and international guests. We were commissioned to design two special color seals, “Golden Panda Awards” and “Chengdu Welcomes You,” so guests could experience traditional Chinese seal culture on site — a favorite among film stars and experts from home and abroad.
Contact
City tourism, museum products, corporate and government gifts, custom seals for major events… Tell us what you need and we'll be in touch soon.
City-history seals, full-color landmark seals, stamp trails
Full-color artifact seals, scrolls, magnets, postcards, calendars
Bespoke seals for enterprises, governments and major events
Thank you for your interest. We'll get back to you soon.
