Rose

Today's victim was apparently going for "True Love" in Hebrew, but didn't quite get there. Something was lost in translation, and she ended up with this:


This lovely Hebrew tattoo, found and sent in by Ian, does not say "True Love", it doesn't mention love at all! Instead, it roughly says "Truly Insultable". Roughly, because Insultable isn't a real word in Hebrew either. The gust of it is unmistakable, though.

"True Love" in Hebrew is "Ahavat Emet", while our victim's scribble reads "Aliv Emet". Love, Aliv, kind of sounds similar. Could it be some strange transliteration mistake? We'll probably never know.

Anyway, this is how "True Love" is properly written in Hebrew:

This tramp stamp isn't all that bad really. It says "Gili" which in Hebrew means "My Joy".

This piece is only featured here because the owner disagrees with its meaning. The woman claims her tattoo says "My Beloved", and when a well meaning commenter told her otherwise she claimed a "Hebrew linguistics professor" translated it for her.


So listen up, this is a new advice for the tattoo wannagets, don't get your Hebrew translation from linguistics professors, especially when they're drunk (or don't know any Hebrew)!

Now, for our Hebrew lesson., we'll learn to write "My Beloved":

• The top word is"Gili", meaning "My Joy". It isn't gender specific.
• The middle word is "Dodi", meaning "My Beloved" in old Hebrew. It's a male form.
  
• The bottom word is "Ahuvi", which means "My Beloved" in modern Hebrew. It's a male form.

Notice that both forms of beloved, talk about a male beloved, so they should be tattooed on a girl (or a gay boy).

Here is a very simple tattoo design for a client that is going on his forearm. It's very sentimental in my opinion in a way that it's basically a father showing his love for his children to the world. This is definitely something I would do one day when I have a child of my own. My approach to this was to give it that heavenly look because your kids are the biggest joy of one's life. I hope I did justice to that, I'm overall happy with how this turned out.