Post #237932 by Swanky on Thu, Jun 15, 2006 8:05 AM

This reminds me of a gal I met recently at a party. She had a tattoo on her hip of a Hebrew word. I know some Hebrew so I asked her about it. When asked what it said she had an answer like "It means something like..." "No, what does it say. What's the word?" She did not know. She had a Jewish boyfriend who wrote it out for her to have tattooed. I was able to tell her that it was the word root for saving. Maybe saviour, but I'd need a dictionary to be sure.

So what she ended up with was a tattoo that she didn't understand and didn't really mean anything to her except some old boyfriend in some way. The Hebrew was hard to read because the tattoo was blurry. Blurry as her idea of what it was. And to most people it meant nothing and to those who know Hebrew, it is just a word. It was, unfortunately written in a more modern form of Hebrew that takes it firmly out of any spiritual context. All in all, it ended up being meaningless, except as a small historical marker for her. One she actually regrets.

This I see all too often in tattoos. More tattoos people say they don't care for or would change or never have done to begin with. Tattoos of Chinese and Arabic script by people who cannot read them themselves. They assume they know what it says and that it was drawn correctly. Does that little curl make it a different letter? Who knows?

IMO, not knowing what is written on your body is just wrong. The meaning is lost on many levels. And you want a tattoo to have meaning.

As an example: I have a "Lodge" name that is one I gave myself to be known as on any documents and in the "Lodge." This name is actually more of a motto, and it should be in a classic language. I spent a lot of time researching this and came to a certain motto. I have the comfort of knowing that phrase through and through and spent a great deal of time researching it. Learning enough Latin to translate the phrase and the various meanings behind it. And, the phrase is actually a Latin phrase that loses its meaning in English.

That level of knowing the subject leads to a tattoo that has meaning.

Okay. I need to get off the soapbox. Krakatoa, I am not ranting about you. I am generally anti-tattoo and so, I can rant about it without much provocation. Actually, I am just anti-meaningless tattooing. Hipster tattooing.

Nevermind... Do what you wanna do. Just, make it mean something to you and those who see it.