* The original photo can be found in BMEzine.com *
Chuck posted a photo of his tattoos in BMEzine's gallery on Nov. 6.
My Daughters Name In Chinesse
(Dragon Done By Ron At Stormi Steele; Lettering Done By Scott, Stormi Steele, Kingston, Pa)
It looks like Chuck got suckered into believing English alphabet can be translated directly into Chinese characters. Or, perhaps his daughter's name is really 女康流, which means "woman healthy flow".
Oh....oh my. That's so very sad. And this poor guy thinks he has his daughter's name tattooed on him *shakes head*
ReplyDeleteI've met people who have had Chinese characters that phonetically SOUND like their name when strung together, but even that is risky. After all, what may sound like a perfectly lovely european name to the english speaking ear could mean something absurd, or worse embarassing, in Chinese or Japanese.
Yet as bad as I feel, I still laughed.
Thanks Tian, I'm probably going to hell now : P
Oh noes, I hope someone informs this poor soul soon that he has a peculiar Chinese euphemism for menstruation on his right shoulder. That way he can start saving up the money for removal.
ReplyDeleteChuck has a good attitude towards menstruation.
ReplyDelete"woman healthy flow"
ReplyDeletePoor man... I wonder if he'll get it covered up now that/if he's learned what it really says?
Sounds like an "interesting" way to describe a woman's monthly visitor...
ReplyDeleteIt's the mystic "Asian Font" all over again.
ReplyDeleteAs long as the template is available online for tattoo parlors to purchase, there will still be a horde of suckers who are willing to shell out the money just to get laughed at on hanzismatter.com.
Even using the Gibberish Asian Font Template™, the name comes out as AMS or AMR depending on what the last characters is supposed to be… not so much his daughter's name as her initials, and those might not even be right. Could be a messed up attempt at AMY, as there is no Y in the template, so the artist might have substituted a close-by character such as R or S.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he just wants his baby girl to be... uh... fertile.
ReplyDeleteIt's a nice (if excessively personal to be tattooed on you in public) wish...
(You'll have to be gentle with me, I'm only in my third year of university Mandarin.) Reading this is "nu kang liu," do you think his daughter's name could be Nicole?
ReplyDelete"Nicole" in Chinese is 尼科爾 or 尼可, that is far from 女康流.
ReplyDeleteThe all-too-familiar awful font style with the peculiar blend of 充 and 流 make this clearly another Asian Font Disaster. What makes this different from previous A.F.D.s is that, apparently, even the letters given were a mistake. Tragic.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, I bet there could be more than one version floating around of "Nicole." Anyway, I'm just throwing it out there because none of us seem able to make connections between what he says the tattoo is -- his daughter's name -- and what it actually says.
ReplyDeleteI've dealt with tragic tattoo personally...one instance in particular was a friend who thought Chinese or Kanji would translate to spelling out her name. Worse yet, I fear I might have set a bad example...
ReplyDeleteMy given name is Melanie, which many times has been said to be from Greek, meaning "darkness/clad in black". Not to bad for a fortysomething chica, and goth to boot...
I was recovering from a lesbian divorce, so to speak, and feeling rebellious. So I simply hunted up the Japanese Kanji for "black", cross-checked it with a Japanese-national friend, and then still thought about it for a good two more months before I had a little tatt of it on my upper right shoulder. I also have another small wrist tattoo; similar story.
My friend, who I love, showed up proud as hell of her new tattoo (about her seventh) of her name; I had to cringe a bit...it appeared to be pseudo-Katana, and thank God her name only has four letters. Bless her, I didn't have the heart to tell her~~deed was done.
I felt real smug about my own little tattoos (2) for about five years, until I was visiting home and got busted by my little old country mother: "So are those real, or are those them temporary tattoos?" Ouch!
God bless Mama for perspective.
and this is why you don't get words tattooed on you that aren't either your native language or heavily researched
ReplyDeletein some parts of asia there have been translation of english name directly to hanzi in terms of Pronunciation .Even in some chinese newpapers they have translated the name of head of states .
ReplyDeletelooking cool and meaning very wrong is 2 ends of a spectrum .
guys pls help out these lost souls
I've heard that when transliterating a foreign name to Chinese to be written as Hanzi, they would pick up the one with the most positive meaning. But sometimes the combinations would lead to unfavorable situations...one being the event (perhaps an urban legend) of Coca-cola's meaning in old Hanzi transliteration ending up to be "Your ancestors rise from their graves" (of course they changed it)
ReplyDeleteSome other countries have different solutions. As Greek TV can be watched in Turkey's coastal regions, I saw the Greek names written in Greek alphabet and Roman-alphabet names (English, French, Italian etc.) as they were (except movie subtitles)
The last character is neither 流 nor 充, it's 㐬. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%90%AC
ReplyDeleteNormally, I would have to laugh and feel somewhat sad. Now I'm just a bit peturbed, since the initials in question (it's A.M.S) are my own daughters, and yes, I am related to the man in the picture. The initials themself were taken from a poster on the wall of the tattoo shop, and while we apologize for not 'researching' the matter more (we were 19 and 21, so sue us) the idea was that we trusted our tattoo artist enough to guide us in our decision making. Especially since we wanted something unusual and permanent to celebrate the birth of our daughter. Chuck will be contacting the parlor where he got it from to correct the matter, though I doubt they have a guarantee on a four year old tattoo.
ReplyDeleteNormally, I would have to laugh and feel somewhat sad.
ReplyDeleteYes, I must say that this whole story is very sad and I feel for you.
Now I'm just a bit peturbed, since the initials in question (it's A.M.S) are my own daughters, and yes, I am related to the man in the picture.
Let me guess: you're his ex-wife.
The initials themself were taken from a poster on the wall of the tattoo shop, and while we apologize for not 'researching' the matter more (we were 19 and 21, so sue us)
I don't think there is any need to apologize. You caused no harm to anyone. You and Chuck merely decorated your own bodies with gibberish that doesn't mean what you thought it did, after taking the incredibly poor advice of the tattoo parlor people.
But in doing so, you unfortunately exposed yourselves to ridicule such as that you see on this forum. I merely hope that this serves as a warning to other people who might want to do as you had done.
Especially since we wanted something unusual and permanent to celebrate the birth of our daughter. Chuck will be contacting the parlor where he got it from to correct the matter, though I doubt they have a guarantee on a four year old tattoo.
Actually, I see a bit of a dilemma here. Should you and Chuck keep the tattoos, gibberish as they are, in honor of your daughter and as a sort of warning to yourselves not to do anything so stupid again? Or should you laser them off and replace them with something that is more meaningful to you?
But the important thing is not the tattoo -- it's your daughter. I hope you and Chuck do everything you can to raise her right amid all the chaos.
-Alan