Chinese Tattoo Character — Longevity

Sherri sent the following Chinese tattoo confirmation request and the images of her design:

"I got this years ago and have forgotten the meaning. Can you please help me? It is on the inside right ankle."

Hi Sherry,

This looks like a buddha design plus the Chinese character below it in simplified version of the word "longevity" or "long life". Correctly written, culturally non-invasive - not a worry.

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For more information on the differences between Simplified Chinese characters and Traditional Chinese characters, please refer to http://learnchineseez.com/learning-chinese-languages/ under "If you do want to learn Chinese characters, choose the appropriate system".

Strength or Courage... or is it just a Big Mistake?

Jorg sent the image below and asked the following question for a friend who had the tattoo done in Berlin:

"1) Apparently they were meant to mean: strength, courage or determination, or some such thing.
2) on the back, on the right shoulder blade
3) no further tattoos.

Some Chinese people who saw the tattoo said the two characters mean "dog" and "pass" or "good mannered dog" and "pass", where "pass" by itself makes no sense."

Hi Jorg,

I hate to disappoint you, but unfortunately it doesn't mean "courage". In Chinese, the design consists of two characters that look really smashed together (the dot on top should be in the middle closer to the character to the right; if the dot is read together with the character to the left, it means dog, but then the character on the right without the dot will be incorrect and non-readable). The tattoo reads "major demerits", or "serious mistake".

I've seen this design being misinterpreted a few times before. For reference, please see http://www.starchamber.com/2006/04/tattoos-sacred-and-profane.html and http://www.tattoodonkey.com/chinese-tattoos-that-include-authentic-characters-and-symbols-can-form-/chinasuccessstories.com*wp-content*uploads*big-mistake.jpg/

If you get a chance, please let me know where you found this design (in a book? at a tattoo parlor?) It seems someone is distributing some bad information.

Thank you!

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I never obtained any information on which parlors are distributing the incorrect information. If anyone has any knowledge of the origin of this design, or has seen it in a sample book at a parlor, please feel free to email me at mail at ChineseTattoos dot com and let me know. Thanks!

BAD: Chinese Tattoo Symbol vs. Japanese Kanji

Kimberly attached the picture below in a Chinese tattoo confirmation request and asked the following:

"Me and my sister had the same tattoo put on the back of our neck. We were told that it meant "Bad"....but we have recently seen in another shop signs for "BAD" that look nothing like our tattoos so now we are curious as to what our tattoo's mean. We only got the sign for BAD because we liked how the sign looked...but we didnt want the sign for some off the wall thing either :( so please help me figure out what me and my sister have tatted on the back of our necks ?????"

Hi Kimberly,

From the way the character is written, it looks like it is a Kanji character (Chinese characters that are adopted in the Japanese language). It is very similar to the equivalent Chinese character, and most likely will be understood by Chinese, but they do have slightly different meanings:

Japanese Kanji (according to my dictionary, as I am not Japanese): One direct translation is "bad", and other possibilities include "evil", "vice", "wrong", "inferior", "harmful", "unlucky", etc.

Chinese character: It only contains meanings along the lines of "evil", "wickedness" or "hatred" and "loathsome". A more negative association is implied.

Also, it does look like the character is not correctly written. The two slanted/vertical lines on the right do not have any meaning in Chinese. In Japanese, it seems to be a phonetic alphabet found in Japanese Kana (a script, such that Kanji is another script). I am not aware that pairing up with the word "bad" gives it any meaning, but I'm not an expert in Japanese, so I could be wrong. The only other possibility that I know of is that it is an incorrectly written version of the word "person". To be certain, you may want to follow-up with a Japanese native.