Right way chop

[asterroc]

Here's a mirror image of the chop, so it should be "readable" this way.



People are still stumped so far, so my plan is to bring it with me to NYC next time I go, and see if I can track down someone there who can look at it in person and read it.

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A mystery that excites the older generation

[blahblahboy.livejournal.com]

I asked around some people at work, relatives (uncle), and parents. My uncle said he would look at his chinese calligraphy dictionary. I'll update with any info he comes up with.

Some aggregated analysis: Let's number the words in the way chinese is read:

1. top right
2. bottom right
3. top left
4. bottom left

We have a word painting in the house that has a stamp where word #4 appears in the same location. The two most popular words is se4 (as in yan2 se4 -- color) -- which zhongwen.com thinks means "Person's seal", so it's quite likely that is the word. Another possibility is yong1 -- moat, which looks a lot more like the chop character. Either way, it's unlikely this character has any meaning that would be useful to you. As someone noted in your other post, it's likely a title or just simply stating it's the named person's seal. Plus, the fact that an independent stamp has the same character in the same position supports that theory.

It's almost unanimous that character #3 is hu2 -- pot (like teapot).

There's some contention about what the other two words are. One person suggested sometimes the right two characters can sometimes be one word, but it's unlikely given #4 is a superfluous word.

Most people suggested to take it to a chop shop and ask them. There's apparently a chop shop in the Flushing Mall. You could take it there on your next visit.

One other interesting tidbits about chop usage via my uncle. Besides as a fancy seal, people who were illiterate (does illiteracy include the inability to write?) would use it to sign important documents. These are usually older people where it's unlikely they could master any form of literacy.

There's also another possibility that this is a family heirloom. Stone carvings like this with mistakes (if word #3 was hu2 it has a mistake in the top left hand corner in the word) would indicate they were done by hand, meaning the chop could be very old.

Translation: be careful with your chop!!!!! :)