Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Chinese name seal

A couple of days ago I made a Chinese name seal for myself. It has four characters rendered in Zhou style. First character means "thick", second means "plum" and together they mean Bird Cherry (Prunus padus). Third character means "river" and the fourth means "seal of". "Bird Cherry river" is the meaning of my surname in Komi language. Komi people lived along that river before the area became a part of Russia in 16th century. There are subspecies of Bird Cherry native to Japan and China and they are used for bonsai.