Chinese tattoo mistakes, and how to check yours before the needle

Most bad Chinese tattoos are not bad because the artist slipped. They are bad because the design was wrong before it reached the studio: a character that does not exist, a word where a name was meant, a line copied from a font in the wrong order. A Chinese speaker reads the mistake in a second, and a tattoo is read by Chinese speakers for the rest of your life. Every one of these mistakes is checkable in advance, and the checklist at the end takes ten minutes.

Mistake 1: a character that is not a character

The internet is full of "Chinese alphabet" charts that assign a character to each English letter. There is no Chinese alphabet, so these charts are invented: the symbols are either random characters or shapes that look Chinese and mean nothing. A tattoo spelled from one of these is unreadable, and the shapes often come out as near-misses of real characters, which is worse.

How to check: every character in your design should be typeable. If you cannot find it by typing its pinyin in a Chinese keyboard, or looking it up in a dictionary such as MDBG or Pleco, it is not a character.

Mistake 2: a word instead of a name

"Strength", "love", "faith" and "freedom" tattooed as single characters (力, 爱, 信, 自由) are correct Chinese, but they are words on a poster, not something a Chinese person would wear. 爱 on an arm reads the way the word LOVE would read to you in a foreign script: fine, slightly generic. A name is different: a Chinese name is personal by construction, and a well-chosen one carries the meaning you wanted inside it (安 for peace, 毅 for resolve) without being a dictionary entry.

If what you want is a meaning, consider carrying it inside a real name rather than tattooing the word, or choose a classical line, which is what Chinese calligraphy actually puts on walls.

Mistake 3: the right characters in the wrong order

Chinese is written left to right in a horizontal line, or top to bottom in columns that run from right to left. Tattoos that copy a vertical design often reverse the column order, or stack a horizontal phrase so that it reads bottom-up. Names make this worse: the surname must come first, and a name copied from a transliteration will have a dot and the Western order (艾米丽·沃森), which marks it as a foreign label.

How to check: write the characters in one horizontal line and confirm the reading with a speaker. For a vertical design, the first character goes at the top of the right-hand column.

Mistake 4: font characters mistaken for calligraphy

A character typed in a computer font and tattooed looks like a character typed in a computer font. Chinese readers notice the way you would notice a tattoo in Times New Roman. There is nothing wrong with it, but it has none of the brush that makes a Chinese tattoo worth having. Worse are decorative "brush" fonts from free font sites, which sometimes contain wrong strokes because they were drawn by someone who could not read them.

The scripts that work best on skin are running script (行书), which is fluent and still legible, and clerical script (隶书), which is square and ancient-looking. Seal script (篆书) is beautiful and the least legible; cursive (草书) is hard even for native readers. See our guide to the five scripts.

Mistake 5: mirrored or broken strokes

A stencil flipped during transfer mirrors every character; the result is unreadable, and it happens more than you would think with symmetrical-looking designs. A character with a stroke missing or an extra stroke is a different character or no character. 大 (big) with a dot is 太 (too) or 犬 (dog). The dot is two millimetres.

How to check: compare the stencil, as it will be transferred, against a printed reference at the same size. The stencil we supply prints with a centimetre scale and the characters as typed beside the artwork, so the artist can check stroke by stroke.

Mistake 6: meaning drift

Characters have more than one meaning and some have slang meanings the dictionary does not mention. 牛 is "ox" and also "awesome"; 菜 is "vegetable" and "bad at something"; 鸡 is "chicken" and an insult. Two innocent characters can form a phrase with a meaning of its own: 大力 is "great strength" and also a cold medicine. A native reader catches these instantly; a dictionary does not.

How to check: have a native speaker read the whole design cold, without being told what it is supposed to say, and tell you what they see.

The checklist

Run these before you book, in order.

1. Every character is typeable and appears in a dictionary.
2. It is a name or a classical line, not a dictionary word, unless a word is what you want.
3. The order is right: horizontal left-to-right, or vertical columns right-to-left; surname first.
4. The design is brush-written, not a typed font, and in a legible script.
5. The stencil matches a printed reference at the final size, stroke for stroke, and is not mirrored.
6. A native speaker has read it cold and told you what it says.
7. You have the meaning written down, character by character, to show the artist and to keep.

Our tattoo pack is built to pass this list: the name is proposed within rules a Chinese parent would use, written by brush in the script you choose, read by a native Mandarin speaker who signs a certificate listing every character with its pinyin and meaning, and delivered as a stencil at the exact width you want on skin, with mockups so you can see it on a forearm, a collarbone or the nape before anything is permanent.

Questions

Can you check a Chinese tattoo I already have?

We do not offer a checking service, but the list above is what a checker would do. For an existing tattoo, step 6 is the one that matters: a native speaker reading it cold.

Is simplified or traditional better for a tattoo?

Either is correct; simplified is used in mainland China and Singapore, traditional in Taiwan and Hong Kong and in calligraphy generally. Many characters are the same in both. Do not mix the two in one design.

Does a Chinese name tattoo need a surname?

A name without a surname is a given name, which is what friends call you by, and it is a normal thing to tattoo. With the surname it is the full name. Both are correct; four or more characters usually means a transliteration, which is the thing to avoid.

How big should the characters be?

Running and clerical script stay readable at about two centimetres per character; seal script needs three or more. Fine strokes spread over the years, so avoid hairline details below that size.

Names and characters in this guide follow the rules we use when proposing names: common simplified characters, a surname from the Hundred Family Surnames, no awkward homophones. Where a guide says a native speaker reviewed it, the review date is above.