The Calligrapher — Wáng Xīzhī 王羲之

The 'Sage of Calligraphy'; his running script has set the standard for 1,700 years.

Eastern Jin calligrapher (303–361), master of running script/cursive script/regular script — the Sage of Calligraphy; his Orchid Pavilion Preface is the most celebrated work in the tradition, and nearly every later master traces lineage to his hand. Eastern Jin dynasty

Cultural Story

Confucius was asked whom he had ever slandered or praised, and answered with a shrug: 'Whom did I ever blame, whom ever commend? If I have praised, it was only after testing.' The line, from the Wei Linggong chapter, pairs hui and yu as the twin judgments a public life invites. The character yu is renown earned and spoken aloud, the good name that outlives the person who bore it, for better or for worse.

Common words & phrases

• 荣誉 honor · glory · credit
• 名誉 reputation · fame · honor
• 赞誉 praise · acclaim · commend
• 声誉 reputation · prestige · name
• 信誉 credibility · reputation · credit
• 称誉 praise · commend · acclaim

Read the story behind the character

A school awards rong yu, honors, at graduation; a brand guards its ming yu, its reputation, online; buyers zan yu, praise, a quiet hotel. A firm's sheng yu, its standing, opens doors, its xin yu, its credibility, wins the loan, and a teacher is cheng yu, commended, by former students. The character measures the soft capital of being well spoken of, the difference between what you did and what people are still willing to say you did.

Why this character belongs on skin

A word on its mouth, a heart beneath—that is the anatomy of 誉, renown. Praise in the old texts was always double-edged, and the character remembers it. 荣誉, honor; 名誉, good name—the things a gentleman was taught to guard with his life. Reputation, in other words, is a mirror held up by a crowd, and crowds tilt. Yet the hunger for it is honest and old. We want to have been worth something to the people who watched us live—that is not vanity, it is the social animal's way of asking whether its life counted. The trick the sages proposed: earn the word by the deed, not the deed by the word. Do well, let the praise be a shadow that follows. To wear 誉 is to claim that ordering. The heart stays beneath the word always. Ink it where you will see it on the days applause comes—and on the better, harder days when it doesn't, and you work anyway.