Chinese Tattoo Confusion - To Respect or To Fear?

I received this Chinese tattoo confirmation request from Patrick with the message as follows:

"I am sending you a picture of my tattoo to confirm its meaning. I was told that it means respect, it is located on the middle finger of my right hand (large enough to receive it, that is all). As you can see on the picture, on each side of it there is a design that kind of make it look like a ring, that is not part of the Chinese character.

Thank you kindly for your help,

Patrick"

Hi Patrick,

It looks like part of the character (the part on the finger which is also in the white box on the corner) does have a meaning along the lines of "to respect", although today it is widely interpreted as "to fear". There is a correlation, as someone you respect generally also is someone you have reservations about (or "fear")). This is a verb, and not a noun. Because the character leans more toward "fear" than "respect", it is generally not recommended if someone were specifically looking for the word "respect".

Also, you said the left/right was not part of the design. To the Chinese reader (of the image you sent) it looks like they are two character/radicals to the sides of your main character. They look like the characters for "vision", and as if they were meant to be a radical for the character "to fear". However, when combined, there really is no such word (think of radical as an alphabet, e.g. the word "fear" but spelled like "visionfear", which doesn't mean anything).

But if there's something I'm not seeing about the design that makes them obviously not charactes, then I wouldn't worry about it. You can send another photo of the sides if you wish to confirm.

Hope that helps!

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And a follow-up from Patrick:

"Thank you so much for your explanation! Well I really am not somebody who inspires fear but at the time I had it printed I felt lack of respect among my peers which I discovered soon had to be earned. It took some time to work out that state of mind but finally I think that if respect can't be gained in reasonable fashion, fear will do the work in those short lapses of time!

Thank you sincerely,
Patrick"