Help Finding a Kanji Character

Recently, I asked my mother if she could write down my middle name (toru) in kanji. She had to look it up in a dictionary as she could not remember it and eventually wrote it down for me. Lately, I have been searching for it online, to no avail. I used the kanji dictionary that was mentioned in a sticky post on this board as well as another site but could not find it (might be because I do not fully understand how to use his search tool). I even tried using the hiragana converter on windows but I still could not find it. The reason I want to find it online is so that I would be able to put it in my signature. I admit it, it would be to show off a little but mainly because I am proud of it. I'm not necessarily asking you to find it personally, but a good reference would help. Below is a picture of the kanji for "toru" my mother wrote down. FYI: in the context of my name, toru means "to excel (in academics)". Thanks for your time.

透 - it's actually tooru (とおる). The common readings for it would be トウ or すける.

Ahh thank you so much Jimmy! I really owe you one!

Half-n-Half said:

Below is a picture of the kanji for "toru" my mother wrote down. FYI: in the context of my name, toru means "to excel (in academics)". Thanks for your time.

Click to expand...

秀 （しゅう） no doubt you can see in the right radical of the fuller 透 kanji. It is what has the meaning of excel or excellent and would be a totally appropriate character for an academic reference were that indeed your name.

透 has the completely different usage of transparent, licidity, clearness, basically 'show through,' and for obvious reasons sounds very odd in that same context.

The meaning of 透 is what Elizabeth san explained.
透 is one of the most common one for the name "Tooru".
透、徹、亨 are often used for Tooru.

(For your information, what your mother described indeed is 秀 as Elizabeth san pointed out, but its pronunciation is "shuu" or "hide" when used in people's name. Since the appearance look similar to 透, your mother mixed up the meaning of these two...)

Ah, this is very disturbing, as I do not want people to think I am "show through"! I'll have to ask her again, I don't think she has retained as much kanji since moving to the states as she would have if she stayed in Japan.