Your Name is What? Jessica

Today's victim, a girl named Jessica, wanted her name tattooed in Hebrew. Check out her tattoo:


Those of you familiar with Hebrew, can notice two interesting facts:
  1. The tattoo is written in script
  2. It actually says Jetsica
I had to mention the writing being in script, as it suggests that this tattoo was composed by a native speaker - either a stupid or a drunk one. He used the Hebrew letter Tsadi for the S in Jessica, even though Tsadi sounds nothing like S. Tsadi doesn't even have an equivalent letter in English, and it sounds like "ts" or like "zz" in pizza.

The correct way to write Jessica in Hebrew, is by using a Samekh - it sounds exactly like S. You can see two versions of Jessica below, the first written in script (my own handwriting) and the second is in print.


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Posted by Typo Tat
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5 comments:

  1. AnonymousDecember 20, 2009 at 4:52 AM

    Maybe it was done by a Sephardi jew who knows more Hebrew than you. Ssadhi makes an Emphatic S like the Arabic letter Ssad. Its only in Europeanized hebrew that it has become Tz.

    ps you used quote not a chupchik

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownDecember 21, 2009 at 1:29 AM

    Why use ANY Sepharadi out-dated pronunciation? Jesica is not a Henrew name and therefore anything like that is redundant. The combination Gimel+aposhtophe itself is a foreign one. The most correct way to write this is, indeed
    ג'סיקה

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousApril 11, 2011 at 9:47 AM

    See:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_%28given_name%29

    Jessica is a profoundly Jewish name deriving from Genesis 11:27

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousDecember 16, 2011 at 2:45 AM

    ok, but its not a hebrew name

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousApril 4, 2012 at 4:19 PM

    @wolverine2040- the ancient Hebrew letter Ṣade isn't equal to the English 'S'. You have to use Samekh anyway.

    In order to write Jessica in Hebrew you have no choice but to use modern Hebrew, since the consonant 'J' exist only in modern Hebrew(and Hebrew Yemenite dialect).

    ReplyDelete

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