“Dear Reader, It Meant ‘Concubine’”: 49 Tattoos That Don’t Mean What People Thought They Meant

I've seen a tourist in Japan with 右腕 (right arm) and 左腕 (left arm) tattooed on his arms. At least he got the directions right.

The only one I’ve seen irl is not that funny like getting Chicken Noodles  tattooed but is still amusing 

The Chinese character 士 (shi) usually appears in words for like warrior, soldier, scholar etc. The tattoo was some phrase involving "勇士" (yong shi) which means brave/courageous warrior. However, if the bottom horizontal stroke is longer than the top, 士 becomes 土 (tu) which means dirt. So 勇士 became 勇土, which is nonsensical but if read literally, “courageous dirt.”

Edit: I forgot to mention, in common colloquial Chinese, 土 when used as an adjective means tacky and unrefined in a country rube kind of way. So 勇土 can be read as “courageous tacky” too, which is perfectly fitting for a misspelled tattoo.

Edit2: Pay attention to this in Japanese too since 武士道 (“bushido”) is a common tattoo for a certain kind of Western guy. Since it’s an old term and written in kanji, it is also perfectly legible in Chinese where it literally means “the warrior’s path/way,” same as Japanese. Even pronunciation is similar (“wu shi dao”). I don’t know what happens in Japanese if 土 is subbed in accidentally but in Chinese it changes the meaning to “martial dirt path.”.

My Japanese is terrible and it was a bumper sticker not a tattoo, but “安 - Peaceful.”

Sure, it means that, but it’s used a lot more commonly to mean “cheap.”.

Knew a guy named "Gale" in college. He wanted a tattoo that basically said "strong wind", I'm guessing as a pun on "gale force" or something?


Anyways, he was kind of a jerk and not the brightest bulb, so instead of 強風 (strong wind) he got... 弱虫 (weakling). Watching him try to impress the Asian students was always amusing, and to my knowledge no one ever told him what it actually meant.

Once I saw a foreigner with a tattoo that said "pillow leg". I have no idea what they wanted it to say... It stuck out because how can a pillow have legs?

I used to date this (much older) guy when I was young and dumb. When HE was young and dumb, he got tattooed in Bali with a Chinese character on each hip. he thought they said "peace" and "freedom" or something (this was a long time ago so I can't remember the specifics) but they actually said "rainbow" and "toast". he was a total flog so serves him right, lol.

My friend went to Japan for a work thing and got a kanji tattooed on her. She's a big girl, and because she was trying to work on that, has been getting biiiig into hiking, so she went to have the kanji for tree put on her. She's trusting, and has NO idea what the kanji for that is, so she just trusted the tattoo artist to put that on her. She came back, aaaaaand didn't understand that the kanji for tree, 木, which is what she SHOULD have gotten, was instead supplanted with 太. It was stylized, but it DEFINITELY that second kanji. That means "fat," by the way. I told her (because I HAD to, before less kind people saw it), and together we rushed to my tattoo artist and had it fixed.

Basically, they added the vertical line that would make it look more like "tree" and then added a bunch of those little slash radicals all over the place and brushed green over it to look like leaves. It looks pretty convincing, and you really can't tell it ever said, "Fat" in the first place.

There's a guy at my gym who just has あ on his shoulder.

That's just... The letter A, essentially. It means nothing.

I once met a guy with huge hieroglyphs on his forearm. He proudly declared that it meant "Chosen by fate" or something pathetic.
In fact, it said "Sesame Chicken". Literally item #42 on the menu of the nearest Chinese restaurant. The worst thing was that the font looked like it was drawn with the left foot. I didn't want to disappoint him - let him continue to feel like the chosen delicacy.

"幸运饼干" — Lucky cookie. As in, fortune cookie.

Full sleeve. Very detailed.

Saw this on the neck of an Asian person years ago:  畜生。You know how in mix martial art, people like to use words “animal” or “beast”, treating them like the highest compliment one can use to describe a powerful fighter?  That’s probably what this Asian American guy thought.  Although in its earliest days as transliteration of Sanskrit word meaning just animal, for thousands of years now in Chinese, it has two common meanings: 1) domesticated animal, 2) person so dumb/ignorant, so lacking in morality, he might as well been a beast.

I was standing in a line for a ride at universal studios and the guy infront of me had a tattoo the length of his forearm that was in large computer font 宮保雞丁， "Kung Pao Chicken".

Saw some guy with a giant tat on the side of his neck and it was 生, or born

Turned his head and I see 笑, laughter

Then there’s another one, 爱, love

Bro has “live laugh love” all across his neck in black but one of them’s not even the correct verb.

A guy thought he had the word freedom in Thai across his chest. It actually said freedom from women.

I knew a girl in the aughts who had a Chinese character tattooed on her shoulder blade that she thought meant angel. Our Mandarin speaking and reading friend had to break the news that it actually translated to hepatitis B. Thankfully, she tested negative and had it covered up and I was able to laugh.

A woman with the characters “Pretty girl”. But not pretty as in beautiful. Pretty as in pretty good, pretty bad.

I met a dude at a wake once who had a tattoo which he thought was “energy” (気), but was in fact the character for “horse” (馬).

If I were a mischievouser being, I would have told him to get the character for “deer” tattooed below it.

My friend tried to get “spirit” tattooed but has since been informed it says “ghost” which I find delightful.

I saw a guy with a tattoo saying "日本话", he told me it was his daughter's name in Japanese.

日本话 literally means "Japanese".

There was an English guy while on holiday in Thailand who decided to get some tattoos. Printed out the designs for both arms and got them done. Unfortunately the tattooist couldn't read English so he included the "left arm" and "right arm" text.