There's Something Lacking...

Today's victim was going for a spiritual ring tattoo. She wanted "Mercy" tattooed in Hebrew on her finger, but I guess God had other plans...

There's just a tiny incorrectness in one of the Hebrew letters. A small lack of a line, and this tattoo spells not "Mercy" but "Lack" or "Absence".

See, Mercy in Hebrew is "Chesed", but turn the letter Dalet into a Resh, and you've ended up with "Cheser", which means something else entirely. I like how it is still a real Hebrew word, though.

Dalet and Resh are very similar, aren't they?

Luckily for this woman, her tattoo is very easy to fix. Just add a tiny protrusion to that Resh, and she's back in the righteousnesses business.

Now, this is how "Chesed", which means Mercy and also Grace in Hebrew, is written:

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Statue Comes to (Misspelled) Life

This is a statue. It resides in The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and spells out Ahava (Love in Hebrew), somewhat artistically.

The design became famous, and can be found in Hebrew jewelry and tattoos all over. Incorrect to one degree or another, usually. In an older entry we saw this same design mangled beyond all recognition. In this one, you can tell what it's supposed to be, but it is still misspelled.

It doesn't spell out Ahava, but rather Achbach, which really means nothing in Hebrew.

See, many Hebrew letters are very similar in appearance. For example He, which produces the HA and the last A in Ahava, is quite similar to Chet, which makes a CH sound. The statue has borderline rendition of the letter He, but the tattoo totally crossed that border.

In the Hebrew language, every little stroke can turn your chosen letter into something else entirely.

Want your Hebrew "Ahava" (Love) statue-like tattoo correct? This is How you'd write it in proper Hebrew. It's really supposed to be all in one line, but we're being artistic, yeah?

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Her Name was Lost in Rotation

When I first saw this tattoo, I thought it wasn't Hebrew writing at all. It looks like some weird script, Martian maybe?

The victim claims this Hebrew-like doodle to be her name, and on closer inspection I realized that it really was. It just so happened that when trying to render her tattoo vertically, some letters were rotated and some were not, creating this very strange result.

I never had to draw this particular chart before:

In any case, the Hebrew tattoo most likely says "Ebony Eve". Most likely, since aside from being mis-rotated, it's also slightly misspelled. So if you have another interpretation of this name, I'd love to hear it!


And this is how you would correctly write "Ebony Eve" in Hebrew. Ebony on the right, Eve is on the left.

My suggestion, when it comes to words which have letters of different height, is not to rotate it letter by letter. It just doesn't look nice.

Want your Hebrew tattoo to be vertical? Just turn the whole thing 90 degrees counter-clockwise. Like this:

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King Jesus The Messiah... Or Not Quite

Today we witness a sad Hebrew tattoo indeed. Not only is our victim apparently a Smurf, but his tat is seriously misspelled too.

This guy wanted "King Jesus the Messiah", and he even managed to get his grammar right. The sentence makes perfect sense... if you manage to decipher it, that is.

Unfortunately, Hebrew letters got our guy confused real bad. I see a Yod turned into apostrophe, a Vav turned into Resh, a Lamed turned into number seven with apostrophe on top (how can that even happen??). Also, all spaces are missing.

It's really quite unreadable if you haven't been clued in first. A very bad, sad, blue Hebrew tattoo.

This is what the guy was going for, "King Jesus the Messiah" in correct Hebrew:

If you want to take it a step further, though, the sentence "Jesus the King Messiah" is a more popular form in Hebrew:

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Puzzle Girl Gets Random Tattoo

For some, getting a plain old Hebrew tattoo is not enough, they just have to be creative. Check out Puzzle Girl here, can you tell what she was going for?


This genius of creativeness got 3 random words, but she couldn't write them right-to-left like normal people, oh no. She wrote them from top to bottom and didn't bother to space the words apart. It looks like one of those how-many-words-can-you-find puzzles, who cares for a game?

Curious about her original Hebrew words?

Mashal - either Story or He Reigned
Tsedek - Justice
Racham - Either Egyptian Vulture or a bastardized form of Mercy

Did I say random?

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The Cross Of Misspelled Virtues

I've had quite a time deciphering this recent Hebrew tattoo that was kindly pointed out to me by Reut. Can you guess what it says?


Well, the first word that stands out is the one on the bottom, "Hochma" - wisdom in Hebrew. Yes, it's written backwards, but if you've been reading this site long enough you're surely used to that mistake by now.

The middle word made me scratch my head and wonder what's going on. It sort of reads "Hioa" which isn't a real Hebrew word. In fact, it is supposed to be "Ometz" - courage. The letter Vav has nikkud attached for reasons unknown, making it look like two letters, the Mem looks very much like a Het and the Tsadi drifted up and attached itself to the next word! Oh yeah, and it's backwards too.

The word on top, "Koach" - strength, is backwards and has the leftover Tsadi from the previous word, making it into gibberish.

All in all, this is a tattoo designed to draw out a "HUH?" from any Hebrew speaker. Luckily, the letters can be easily blacked out and the whole thing forgotten. The victim made one wise choice regarding this tattoo - he made the background black!

Okay, now this is how you'd write "Wisdom Courage Strength" correctly in Hebrew:

Mind, I wrote it out horizontally. If you're planning a vertical tattoo, remember that Hebrew is written right to left, and so the rightmost letters go on top.

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Tombstone Girl and her List of Dead Relatives

What better way to remember your dearly departed than a Hebrew tattoo with relevant names and dates all over your back? Everyone around you now has to remember them too!


Tombstone girl here obviously thought it was a bright idea, but she didn't invest too much time to obtain the correct lettering. As a result her tattoo (the Hebrew part) reads:

Lila daughter of Raniel son of Abrahab (Daniel son of Abraham)
25 of Sayar (25 of Sivan - a Hebrew date)
Porsha Lerach (Korach)
RIP

Morbid much? If you're going to be a walking memorial, at least spell it right...

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Wrong Place for Forgiveness

Today I bring you two victims, both with the same mistake.


First, check out this girl's ink. She wanted to get a "Forgiveness" tattoo in Arabic. Did I say Arabic? I sure did...


As you can see, this is very much not Arabic, but Hebrew. However, this is not "Forgiveness" either. Forgiveness, in Hebrew, is Slicha. There is also a multiple form (forgivenesses?) Slichot.

This particular Hebrew tattoo says neither. It says Slichoch which isn't a real word and just sounds funny.


Okay, now for the second victim:


This tattoo is not only misspelled - says the meaningless non-word Slichch, but it's real ugly too.


Why did these mistakes happen? It's the similarity of several Hebrew letters, which can confuse the hell out of novice Hebrew scholars:



So how do you write "Forgiveness" in Hebrew? Like this:


By the way, it also means sorry, which I bet these people really are.

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Intergalactic Brotherhood Doodle

Today I bring you this fine specimen of a Hebrew tattoo, a token of brotherly affection that is supposed to read "Eternal Brother"... but does not.


In fact, it's hardly readable at all. Unless you know what you're looking at, you'll probably never realize it's Hebrew. In this case - a definite advantage for the victim.

Anyway, when deciphered, it actually comes to say "Olam Ach" in Hebrew, which translates to "Brother World" (you know, like Twin Towns... but galactically).

The mixup stems from two factors - Olam, which means world, can also mean eternal - but only in suitable context. Also, there's absolutely no elegant way to say "Eternal Brother" in Hebrew without sounding dumb. Just one of those language things.

The closest decent sounding variation I could think up was "Brothers Forever" - "Achim Lanezzach":

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Love with Extras

Today's victim wanted a Hebrew tattoo saying "Love":


Well, she sure got it... and then she got some free extras on top!

It's a bit strange. The word "Love" (Ahava in Hebrew), is written perfectly well, and in a nice font too. Unfortunately, there are two extra Yod letters above it - that simply don't belong!

Not only that those Yods shouldn't be there, but they are also placed horizontally, while the rest of the tattoo is done vertically.

Maybe they're supposed to be initials? If the girl wanted to write initials, this is absolutely not the way to go about it, since even if we ignore the vertical/horizontal mismatch, the Hebrew language still has this concept called spacing, and it should be applied between any two words.

To compare, this is how you'd write "Love" in Hebrew, vertically. See what was left out?



EDIT: This Hebrew tattoo was confirmed by the owner herself to say "Rak Ahava" - Only Love. Now that it has been pointed out, I can totally see it. 


Still, I wouldn't have guessed myself that was what it said, so this post continues to be archived under "Sloppy Styling" category.

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Chronology of Tattoo Disaster

Today's victim owns a very special piece of jewelry. It's a necklace, and it features her name written in Hebrew. The victim probably likes it a lot, as she decided to base her permanent tattoo on the little trinket:


What is the girl's name, anyway? Honestly, I don't know.

Unless She is actually named "Dabima", as her necklace suggests, it would be safe to assume that the necklace is misspelled. If I had to guess, I'd say "Rebecca", though a terribly misspelled one.

Now look at the tattoo., see how much worse than the necklace it turned out. Every single letter is misshapen somehow. Several even morphed into entirely different letters.

Using your jewelry as a template for a Hebrew tattoo - bad idea. Using misspelled jewelry - even worse! Don't do it kids, it's just not worth the grief!

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Believe in Dictionaries (But Only to a Degree)

Does looking up the word for your Hebrew tattoo, in a dictionary, sounds like a good idea? Today's victim apparently thought so...


The girl wanted a Hebrew tattoo saying a very spiritual "believe". The resulting tattoo actually does say "believe", but it also has several extras, attached for free.

Look at the right part of the tattoo, the letter Pe in parentheses. This is the dictionary's shorthand, indicating a verb. Now look at the leftmost character of the tattoo... What do we have there, could it be an unmatched random parenthesis? Oh yeah. However did it get there?

Without all the special extras, the Hebrew tattoo saying "Believe" (as in "to believe") should look like this:


If you want your "Believe" as an order (believe!), that would be a little bit different.


The lesson of this little story should be clear - Dictionaries are alright for getting your tattoo material, but some good judgment should be applied as well. Also, if something looks like a punctuation mark - it most likely isn't an unknown ancient symbol.

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Jamil's First Hebrew Lesson

Continuing with the Hebrew tattoo name trend, today we have a victim named Jamil. Clever guy that he is, Jamil decided to conquer the Hebrew language all by himself...


He failed miserably. This Hebrew tattoo is impossible do decipher. It's a road map to disaster.

Instead of a J sound in Jamil, there's a G (as in God).

You can see that the tattoo was supposed to be a top-to-bottom feature, but there are actually two letters in one of the rows. Yes, Yod is a smallish letter, but it still deserves a row of its own!

We've seen that some of the Hebrew letters have two forms, the regular and the final. See the following table:


Our friend Jamil probably found a similar table and saw that the letter Mem has two forms. What did he do? He thought it would be best to use both forms in his tattoo. Better safe than sorry? Not in this case.

Now, this is how you properly write Jamil in Hebrew:


You see how I wrote the name right to left? It's because the letters are of different heights, it would look quite awkward and ugly written from top to bottom.

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Your Name is What? Xara

Today's victim wanted to tattoo the name of her daughter, Xara, in Hebrew on her back:


Unfortunately, the transcription of this name from English to Hebrew was poorly done. Add to that a bit of freehand styling, and you've got yourself something utterly unrecognizable.

Had I not actually known this tattoo was meant to say Xara, I never would have guessed. In fact, it reads something like "Ksaoch".

The first mistake is due to the letter X, which is absent from the Hebrew language. Whoever composed this tattoo, used the Hebrew letters Qof and Samekh to represent the X. This combination reads as "KS", but the kid is not named Ksara, is she?

When transcribing a name, phonetics are very important. We've seen this kind of phonetics fail already, in a "Michaela" tattoo. See, the name Xara can be pronounced as either Zara or Sara and the Hebrew should be written accordingly.

This is how you write Sara and all its variations (Sahra Sahrah Sarah Sarra Sarrah) in Hebrew:


This is how you write Zara and all its variations (Zahra Zahrah Zarah Zarra Zarrah) in Hebrew:


The second mistake in the original tattoo, is the sloppy styling. Do not attempt styling Hebrew letters unless you know Hebrew!

Many Hebrew letters are similar to each other, a tiny line or a single curve make all the difference. Two letters in this tattoo are mutants by styling:


Compare these letters to the tattoo, can you see what went wrong? Styling your Hebrew is dangerous. Kids, don't do it!

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Three Errors in One Life

Some Hebrew tattoos testify about their bearer's intelligence:


The above tattoo is supposed to say "Life" (Chayim) in Hebrew. It's a very common tattoo and a quick Google search should be enough to secure a correct translation.

Today's victim apparently forgot to pay his brain bill. What else would explain getting three letters wrong in a four letter tattoo?

The first letter CHET was turned into a HE, they're somewhat similar, I can understand that. However, turning two YODs into a double-quote? That's just dumb.

Now, this is how the normal people write "Life" (Chayim) in Hebrew:

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The Abstract Art of Hebrew Tattoo

Today we have something... different:


Where is the bad Hebrew tattoo, you ask? What's the deal with this piece of abstract expressionism, you say?

This is our Hebrew tattoo. Yes really!

In fact, this tattoo that was supposed to say "Love" in Hebrew. It seems that the artist got somewhat carried away with tweaking the script, rendering the letters totally irrecognizable. Ugly, too.

Unless you really know what you're looking for, this tattoo is for all intents and purposes just a random collection of lines.

Now, this is how a sane person writes "Love" (pronounced "Ahava" in Hebrew):


Do you see the resemblance now? No? Here's a visual aid.

Take a few minutes, squint, turn your head this way and that way, it'll come to you eventually. Maybe.


By the way, in Hebrew, you're not supposed to cut a word in half either!

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