King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “commencement”

发轫
fā rèn
Traditional: 發軔
to set (sth) afoot; to initiate; beginning; origin

The closest CC-CEDICT match for commencement is 发轫 (fā rèn), defined as: to set (sth) afoot; to initiate; beginning; origin; commencement.

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

发 fā
to issue, to dispatch, to send out; hair
radical 29 ⼜ · 5 strokes
轫 rèn
brake
radical 159 ⾞ · 7 strokes

Traditional forms

Related words

Other words that share a character with 发轫.

WordPinyinMeaning
发展 (發展)fā zhǎndevelopment; growth
发生 (發生)fā shēngto happen; to occur; to take place; to arise (e.g. 发生问题 (fā shēng wèn tí) "a problem arises")
发现 (發現)fā xiànto notice; to become aware of; to discover; to find; to detect
开发 (開發)kāi fāto exploit (a resource); to open up (for development); to develop
发布 (發佈)fā bùvariant of 发布 (fā bù)

See also: Japanese symbol for “commencement”.

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.