Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Another winner from Checkoutmyink.com with caption stating the three characters are his girlfriend's initials.



Apparently this man did not receive the memo about there is no such thing as "Chinese initials for English names".

tattoo_shu4yong3tian2

Beyond that, we have no clue what exactly the initials are supposedly to be.

Update: Reader Becki and others have noticed the initials may be "LBP" (somehow it reminds me of O. P. P. aka. Other People's Pussy by Naughty By Nature) written in a font that mimics pseudo-Chinese, i.e. The Choy Suey Font.

By the way, chop suey is not an authentic Chinese dish, rather according to legend it is from table scraps.

Chop Fooey
Mental Floss magazine, May-June 2009 issue, page 19.

20 comments:

  1. If you kinda squint in a charitable way it could be LBP.

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  2. The first character is more likely 恕.

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  3. Man, poor guy has a back like mine -_- the hair part, anyway. Nooooot so much on the tattoo....

    Great site, by the way. Just found it recently and gave it a must deserved spot on my RSS feed :)

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  4. I was thinking along the same lines as Becki. But I thought it said LBF. Really though, if you don't speak the language, don't get it tatooed on your body. You deserve to look like an idiot.

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  5. In my opinion first character looks like smiley face " ;) "

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  6. I agree with Becki - I think they "Orientalized" English letters, that's all.

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  7. but what do the characters mean?

    just out of curiousity...

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  8. stumbled upon this.. his back.. is disgusting..

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  9. > First anonymous, i dont agree that if you cant speak the language, dont have it tattoo'd, just try and have a better understanding of what your having done. it works both ways, i've seen many japanese cars where they've had graphics made up in english, but if read by someone that speaks it as a first language, it is actually just utter gibberish.

    whilst were on the subject, anyone care to have a stab at this?

    http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v231/dubster82/P4170191.jpg

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  10. @dubster82,

    Having silly stickers on vehicles are hardly the same realm as body tattoos, don't you think?

    The character in your link is 辰 and here is its reference,

    http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=8fb0

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  11. I just realized a benefit of this: if his girlfriend ever breaks up with him, the tattoo won't be as embarrassing--he can just make up another meaning for it. K

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  12. @dubster82

    "i've seen many japanese cars where they've had graphics made up in english, but if read by someone that speaks it as a first language, it is actually just utter gibberish."

    Yes! But I think that this all the more supports Anonymous' notion that if you don't speak the language, don't mess with it.

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  13. My vote is that they are English letters made to look like Chinese characters. I believe it is LBF or LBP.

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  14. i agree, that getting a Tattoo is a in a totally different realm to stickers on a car. When i said it works both ways, i meant more, its fine to look and say how the west has screwed up and misused the language from the East. I meant it works both ways in that sense. Tho i do love this blog lol

    However, my point was, although these stickers or tattoo's mean nothing, a bit more research would of went down a treat.

    I myself am scarred for a life with a Tattoo, Arabic in fact running down both sides of my fore arm. i have my own reasons for choosing this language as a tattoo, and myself am not Muslim, nor do i speak Arabic. However, what i've got was translated in Dubai and i have randomly met 2 egyptians where i live who have came up to me, struck up conversation and clarified to me it says what i think it does. It was a message given to their people from a leader past, which i like, so its fitting to have it done in arabic.

    Also in the world of tattoo design, the english language doesnt come accross as the nicest to look at, where the likes of arabic or chinese (esp. traditional as discussed in this blog before) and a good few other languages lend them selves far better to a design point of view

    Anonymous 2 - Thanks for the translation, tho for some reason i cant see the link i posted properly, how did you manage? so is the tattoo in the photo totally ok, as theres a bit about it that bothers me and every character i find is the same as the one you posted :)

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  15. The "Chop Suey" font article linked was interesting. In Turkey, we mostly know those fonts as "Martial Arts Dojo Fonts" since earlier martial arts dojos in Turkey mostly used these fonts on their sign boards and Dogi manifacturers used then on their dogis.

    By the way, my electronic Japanese-Japanese dictionary Kojien (広辞苑) included Chop Suey as チャプスイ in Katakana and 雑砕 in Kanji and states that it's "a kind of Chinese Dish" The English-Japanese electronic dictionary says Chop Suey is "A Western Style Chinese Donburi (deep bowl) meal" Perhaps the Kanji was coined afterwards.

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  16. Here's the thing about chop suey. Obviously the nasty snot-sauce thing you can get in the USA is nothing like what anyone eats in China. But the origin story of it, from what I've heard, is different (and having spent several years between Taiwan and China, it is credible). There are many dishes in China and Taiwan that are basically just cheap, quick leftover-food stir fry. I've heard it called "shi cai" or "ten vegetables" in Taiwan, as well as another name I can't recall, and yet other names in Cantonese and Taiwanese.

    So what I've heard is that this basic stir fry, sort of the Chinese equivalent of casserole in the USA, made it to the USA through all the Chinese immigrants who settled on the West coast. The pronunciation got corrupted and the taste was altered to suit a foreign market, and what we know as "chop suey" was born.

    Just throwing it out there...

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  17. Yes, see the Wikipedia article on Chop Suey for a likely history of the dish — it's not as straightforwardly 'invented in America' as it's sometimes made out to be.

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  18. Mind you - the one good thing about all this is, as soon as that forest he chopped off to get tattooed grows back, any embarrassment will be covered up! :)

    (A friend sent me a link to this site and I've been spending the better part of the day reading it. It's just awesome!)

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