Chinese Tattoo Symbols

 

Chinese tattoo symbols have been very popular in the Western world the last decade or so, and they still are today. Chinese characters are beautiful little pieces of art. They are exotic and mysterious, what makes them very suitable for a tattoo design.

 

Chinese Symbol Tattoos

Chinese symbol tattoos are for westerners only, you'll seldom see a Chinese with a character tattoo. The art and writing of the traditional Chinese culture have graceful lines which lend themselves perfectly to the art of tattooing.

A word of warning though: research the Chinese character you are interested in thoroughly, you don't want to be the subject of a story like this one:

 

There was this article in the newspaper a couple of years ago about a teenager who paid $180 to have his arm tattooed with Chinese characters. He wanted the Mandarin characters for "Love, honor and obey" etched on his skin, but he got quiet a shock when he learned his Chinese tattoo really meant: "At the end of the day, this is an ugly boy". He found out the truth when he noticed the effect his tattoo had on a woman serving at a Chinese restaurant, who reluctantly translated the tattoo for him. Going back to the tattoo shop, he found out it had closed. He is now planning to spend over $1200 on laser tattoo removal.

 

If you are thinking about getting a Chinese writing tattoo, make sure you get your translation from a reliable source. Make sure your tattoo design really means what you think it does.

Also, make sure that the tattoo artist you select is able to reproduce the Chinese characters correctly. Find a tattoo artist who has had experience with Chinese character tattoos and can render the writing the right way.

Hanzi

Hanzi is the name for the traditional Chinese characters used in the official written language of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and Chinese communities out of China.

There are about 47,000 Hanzi characters, but many of them are unused (to be fully literate, you need to know about 4000 of them). Most Chinese words are written with multiple characters, one for each syllable.

Besides traditional Chinese there is also Simplified Chinese, an attempt to increase literacy in China. Simplified Chinese characters have less number of strokes than traditional Chinese. They are used in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore.

Here's an example, on the left (in black) is the traditional Chinese character for "Chinese", next to it (in red) is the simplified character:

 

 

Here are the most popular Chinese symbols used for a tattoo and their meaning. The pronunciation of the words is between brackets. If your word is not in the list below, click here for a Chinese translation (it's also possible to transliterate names into Chinese symbols):

 

- Air (Kōng qì) -	- Angel (Tiān shǐ) -
- Anger (Fèn nù) -	- Aquarius (Bǎo Píng Zuò) -
- Bamboo (Zhú) -	- Beauty (Měi) -
- Believe (Xiāng xìn) -	- Bravery (Yīng Yǒng) -
- Brothers (Xiōng dì) -	- Younger Brother (dì dì) -
- Elder Brother (gē gē) -	- Buddha (Fó) -
- Chi (Qì) -	- Child (Ér tóng) -
- Courage (Yǒng qì) -	- Crazy (Fēng kuáng) -
- Crisis (Wéi jī) -	- Death (Sǐwáng) -
- Dragon (Lóng) -	- Enthusiasm (Rè chén) -
- Eternity (Yǒng héng) -	- Faith (Xìn yǎng) -
- Family (Jiā tíng) -	- Fate (Mìng yùn) -
- Father (Fù qīn) -	- Fire (Huǒ) -
- Fish (Yú) -	- Forever (Yǒng yuǎn) -
- Forgiven (Yuán liàng) -	- Fortune (Yùn qì) -
- Fox (Hú lí) -	- Freedom (Zì yóu) -
- Friend (Péng yǒu) -	- Friendship Forever (Yǒu yì cháng cún) -
- Friendship (Yǒu Qìng) -	- Gemini (Shuāng zǐ zuò) -
- Good Luck (Xìng yùn) -	- Happiness (Xìng fú) -
- Harmony (Hé Shéng) -	- Hate (Hèn) -
- Health (Jiàn kāng) -	- Heaven (Tiān táng) -
- Hope (Xī wàng) -	- Independence (Dú lì) -
- Infinity (Wú Xìan) -	- Inner Strength (Nèi zài de lì liàng) -
- Joy (Kuài lè) -	- Karma (Yīn Yuàn) -
- Koi Fish (Jǐn lǐ Yú) -	- Libra (Tiān chèng zuò) -
- Love (Ài) -	- Loyalty (Zhōng chéng) -
- Luck (Yùn qì) -	- Lucky (Xìng yùn de) -
- Marriage (hūn yīn) -	- Miracle (Qí jī) -
- Mother (Mǔ qīn) -	- Passion (Jī qíng) -
- Peace (Hé píng) -	- Pride (Zì háo) -
- Scorpio (Tiān xiē zuò) -	- Serendipity (ǒu rán xìng) -
- Sisters (Jiěmèi) -	- Younger Sister (mèi mèi) -
- Elder Sister (Jiě Jiě) -	- Soldier (Shì bīng) -
- Soul (Línghún) -	- Strength (lì liáng) -
- Strong (Qiáng) -	- Taurus (Jīn niú zuò) -
- Tiger (Lǎo  Hǔ) -	- Tree (shù) -
- True Love (zhí ài) -	- Truth (Zhēn lǐ) -
- Unbreakable (Láo bù kě pò) -	- Warrior (Zhàn shì) -
- Water (Shuǐ) -	- Wealth (Cái fù) -
- Yin Yang (Yīn yáng) -	- Zen (Shàn) -

 

Here are 9 more pages full of Chinese symbols:

 

 

Famous Chinese Tattoos

Here's a list of celebrities with a Chinese symbol tattoo:

• Allen Iverson: basketball player with about 20 tattoos. He's got the Chinese character for respect on his arm.
• Mary J Blige: R&B star with the Chinese character for strength on her right hand.
• Sher: also has the Chinese character for strength, but on her right shoulder.
• Melanie Brown (Mel B): Spice Girl with a Chinese character on her belly and a dragon tattoo on her back.
• Nathalie Imbruglia: singer with a Chinese character tattoo on her left foot, meaning courage.
• Julia Roberts: has a red heart inside a Chinese character, meaning strength of heart.
• Kiefer Sutherland: has a tattoo of a Chinese character meaning undying love.
• Tila Tequila: has got 2 Chinese characters on her neck and one on her right wrist.
• David Beckham: has a Chinese proverb on the left side of his body: "'Death and life have determined appointments. Riches and honour depend upon heaven."

 

Once again: Chinese writing tattoos are a great choice for a tasteful tattoo, but make sure you do your research properly!