The Name Ocean in Japanese/Chinese on a Custom-Made Wall Scroll.

Click the "Customize" button next to your name below to start your personalized ocean calligraphy artwork...

 yáng
 you
 
Ocean Scroll

This is the Chinese and old Korean Hanja word for ocean. This can be pronounced in Japanese, and has the same meaning but is rarely seen alone in Japanese.

Besides ocean or sea, this character can also mean foreign, wide, or vast.

It's more common for Chinese people to use a different word “hai” for ocean or sea.

 hǎi yáng
 kai you
Ocean Scroll

海洋 is probably the most common word for “ocean” in Japanese. 海洋 is also sometimes used in Chinese and Korean Hanja.

In Japan, this can also be a female given name when pronounced as Miyou or Unami.

 dà yáng
 tai you
Great Sea Scroll

This is a rarely-used word for ocean in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. This is here mostly for reference - please order a different ocean for your custom calligraphy wall scroll.

The first character means “big” or “great.”
The second means “ocean” or “body of water” (it can sometimes mean “foreign” but not in this case).
The first character designates that you are talking about a great or huge body of water (certainly a major ocean and not a smaller sea).

The Sea of Knowledge Has No Limits

 xué hǎi wú yá
The Sea of Knowledge Has No Limits Scroll

學海無涯 is a Chinese proverb that reads, “sea of learning, no horizon.”

Colloquially, it means there are no limits to what one still has left to learn.

This would be the Chinese equivalent to the quote from Hippocrates, “ars longa, vita brevis,” meaning “it takes a long time to acquire and perfect one's expertise.”


See Also:  Learning is Eternal

 hǎi
 umi
 
Ocean / Sea Scroll

海 is the character often used for sea or ocean in Chinese, Japanese Kanji, and old Korean Hanja. In some context, this can refer to the beach, or an area near the sea, such as “Shanghai” (same hai is the second character of Shanghai).

If you are looking for a universal word for ocean or sea - or can't decide which character for ocean or sea that you want, pick this one!

海 is also a common female given name in Japan - also a good name for a restaurant as “Umi Sushi” would mean “Ocean Sushi Restaurant.”


海Please note that our Japanese master calligrapher will tend to write this character in the form shown to the right (a line instead of two dots). Both versions are correct, and can be read in either language. Let us know if you have a preference when you order.

The Way of the Wave

The Tao of the Waves

 làng zhī dào
The Way of the Wave Scroll

浪之道 is a great title for a surfer whose lifestyle is entwined with the surf and waves.

This can be translated a few different ways:
The Way of the Wave
The Dao of the Wave
The Tao of the Waves
Note: Dao and Tao are the same character (道), just sometimes romanized differently.


The following table may be helpful for those studying Chinese or Japanese...

Title CharactersRomaji (Romanized Japanese)Various forms of Romanized Chinese
Oceanyou / yoyáng / yang2 / yang
Ocean海洋kai you / kaiyou / kai yohǎi yáng / hai3 yang2 / hai yang / haiyang
Great Sea大洋tai you / taiyou / tai yodà yáng / da4 yang2 / da yang / dayangta yang / tayang
The Sea of Knowledge Has No Limits學海無涯
学海无涯
xué hǎi wú yá
xue2 hai3 wu2 ya2
xue hai wu ya
xuehaiwuya
hsüeh hai wu ya
hsüehhaiwuya
Ocean
Sea
umihǎi / hai3 / hai
The Way of the Wave浪之道làng zhī dào
lang4 zhi1 dao4
lang zhi dao
langzhidao
lang chih tao
langchihtao
In some entries above you will see that characters have different versions above and below a line.
In these cases, the characters above the line are Traditional Chinese, while the ones below are Simplified Chinese.


Dictionary

Lookup Ocean in my Japanese & Chinese Dictionary

All of our calligraphy wall scrolls are handmade.

When the calligrapher finishes creating your artwork, it is taken to my art mounting workshop in Beijing where a wall scroll is made by hand from a combination of silk, rice paper, and wood.
After we create your wall scroll, it takes at least two weeks for air mail delivery from Beijing to you.

Allow a few weeks for delivery. Rush service speeds it up by a week or two for $10!

When you select your calligraphy, you'll be taken to another page where you can choose various custom options.


A nice Chinese calligraphy wall scroll

The wall scroll that Sandy is holding in this picture is a "large size"
single-character wall scroll.
We also offer custom wall scrolls in small, medium, and an even-larger jumbo size.

A professional Chinese Calligrapher

Professional calligraphers are getting to be hard to find these days.
Instead of drawing characters by hand, the new generation in China merely type roman letters into their computer keyboards and pick the character that they want from a list that pops up.

There is some fear that true Chinese calligraphy may become a lost art in the coming years. Many art institutes in China are now promoting calligraphy programs in hopes of keeping this unique form of art alive.

Trying to learn Chinese calligrapher - a futile effort

Even with the teachings of a top-ranked calligrapher in China, my calligraphy will never be good enough to sell. I will leave that to the experts.

A high-ranked Chinese master calligrapher that I met in Zhongwei

The same calligrapher who gave me those lessons also attracted a crowd of thousands and a TV crew as he created characters over 6-feet high. He happens to be ranked as one of the top 100 calligraphers in all of China. He is also one of very few that would actually attempt such a feat.


Some people may refer to this entry as Ocean Kanji, Ocean Characters, Ocean in Mandarin Chinese, Ocean Characters, Ocean in Chinese Writing, Ocean in Japanese Writing, Ocean in Asian Writing, Ocean Ideograms, Chinese Ocean symbols, Ocean Hieroglyphics, Ocean Glyphs, Ocean in Chinese Letters, Ocean Hanzi, Ocean in Japanese Kanji, Ocean Pictograms, Ocean in the Chinese Written-Language, or Ocean in the Japanese Written-Language.