Friday, December 10, 2004

Master of Stupidity





Roddy from Chinese Forums tipped me about an user "insanejester" on his forum wanting to get a Chinese tattoo for his 18th birthday.



The photo shown above is what the young man finally got.



It means "idiot".



呆 = dull; dull-minded, simple, stupid

子 = offspring, child; fruit, seed of; 1st terrestrial branch



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9 comments:

  1. Crane WANGDecember 11, 2004 at 12:32 AM

    oh, why choose this as a birthday tatto...
    ;-_-

    ReplyDelete
  2. InsanejesterDecember 11, 2004 at 10:04 AM

    why not?
    what would you have chosen?

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousDecember 11, 2004 at 4:34 PM

    Yeah, I mean, the guy's handle is "InsaneJester". Clearly he's not trying to project a sober and intellectual image to the world. I'm sure he got this quite intentionally, putting this in a totally different category as the rest of the stuff here.

    ReplyDelete
  4. kenDecember 11, 2004 at 11:23 PM

    呆子 simply sounds like a name for girls since it's quite
    common for girls' name to have 子 at the end. 呆子 should
    mean "DumbGirl", "Ms.Dummy". Although I am not quite sure
    about the reaction Chinese ppl would show, I have to say
    Japanese would be truly surprised at somebody having such a
    tatoo.

    狂師(insane teacher/person/professional) would have been
    much better.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousDecember 13, 2004 at 1:05 AM

    It's true that Japanese girls' names often end in 子, but 呆子 is a Chinese WORD. It means "fool". Again, I'm sure that InsaneJester chose this knowing exactly what it meant, and probably doesn't care if his Chinese tattoo is misunderstood by people who speak a different language, like Japanese.

    Of course the issue of whether you want "fool" tattooed on yourself is totally separate. (I wouldn't, sure.) But as far as Chinese character usage goes, I think he's doing fine.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousDecember 14, 2004 at 2:31 AM

    If you can't get that tattoo removed, one way you can do damage control is to add two more strokes to the first character to make "保". Then your tattoo would mean "protect child".

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousDecember 16, 2004 at 9:01 PM

    How about 保存, which means to conserve? You could even add a noun after it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousApril 7, 2006 at 12:25 AM

    Very funny! But, Tian, might you please consider including the pinyin for characters, to aid the learning of beginner mei guo ren xue sheng students of Chinese? I think your site is wonderful, and would be most grateful for pinyin following correct characters, as I'm sure others would be.
    Xie xie!

    ReplyDelete
  9. tianApril 7, 2006 at 12:29 AM

    Thanks Anonymous, I will definitely take your suggestion under consideration.

    In the meantime, you can get all the information of each character by click on it, which it will lead you to Unihan database.

    ReplyDelete