King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “ancients”

古人
gǔ rén
people of ancient times; the ancients; extinct human species such as Homo erectus or Homo neanderthalensis; (literary) deceased person

The closest CC-CEDICT match for ancients is 古人 (gǔ rén), defined as: people of ancient times; the ancients; extinct human species such as Homo erectus or Homo neanderthalensis; (literary) deceased person.

Before using these characters for a tattoo, check them with a native speaker. Dictionary words often have several meanings, and the right choice depends on context.

Characters and stroke order

古 gǔ
old, classic, ancient
radical 30 ⼝ · 5 strokes
人 rén
man, person; people
radical 9 ⼈ · 2 strokes

Related words

Other words that share a character with 古人.

WordPinyinMeaning
古代gǔ dàiancient times
古老gǔ lǎoancient; old
古典gǔ diǎnclassical
考古kǎo gǔarchaeology; to engage in archaeological studies
古城gǔ chéngancient city
古怪gǔ guàistrange; weird
人民rén mínthe people
人们 (人們)rén menpeople

See also: Japanese symbol for “ancients”.

Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3); Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License (graphics.txt); LGPL-3.0-or-later (dictionary.txt)); wordfreq (CC BY-SA 4.0 (data)). Retrieved 2026-10-22.