Chinese Tattoo Symbol for "Beautiful"

The following email was from MzToya who had forgotten the meaning of the Chinese tattoo she got on the back of her neck, a design chosen from a tattoo parlor book.

"I got this tattoo on my neck maybe eight years ago...picked it out of a book....just got the birds added. I believed it to mean beauty or beautiful....not sure.."

Hi MzToya,

Yes - the character is the formal word for "beautiful" - correctly written in Traditional Chinese. Other meanings include "handsome", "seductive", "fine", "colorful", etc. Although this is not commonly used in the day-to-day language (more literary in a sense), it is a common name for baby girls in China. So no worries if you can't find it in the dictionary, it is absolutely correct.

Thanks!

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More on the Traditional Chinese character for 妍: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A6%8D