Chinese symbol for “civilized”

文明

wén míng

civilized; civilization; culture; 个 (gè)

The closest CC-CEDICT match for civilized is 文明 (wén míng), defined as: civilized; civilization; culture; 个 (gè).

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

文 wén

culture, literature, writing

radical 67 ⽂ · 4 strokes

明 míng

bright, clear; to explain, to understand, to shed light

radical 72 ⽇ · 8 strokes

Related words

Other words that share a character with 文明.

Word	Pinyin	Meaning
文化	wén huà	culture; civilization
文章	wén zhāng	article; essay
文件	wén jiàn	document; file
文学 (文學)	wén xué	literature
文字	wén zì	character; script
说明 (說明)	shuō míng	to explain; to illustrate
证明 (證明)	zhèng míng	proof; certificate
明白	míng bai	clear; obvious; unequivocal; sensible; reasonable

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.