Can anyone tell what this tattoo is supposed to say, or if it actually means anything at all?
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This is not Chinese. It is either a substitution cipher, fake writing "inspired" by Chinese character shapes, or just complete nonsense. – droooze Jul 19 at 23:51
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The owner says it was supposed to mean something but he can't remember what, so I thought that the tattoo artist copied some stylized characters from some Chinese products which combined with his complete lack of knowledge about them resulted in even more weird characters... – Andrew Jul 20 at 0:16
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I'm going to 答非所问 for a quick second.
"Natural Expressions"
Chinese/Kanji & Egyptian Flash/Design Sheets
that offered:
8 Chinese/Kanji & Egyptian Flash/Design Sheets
Here are some wonderful Chinese/Kanji & Egyptian Flash Design Sheets which are very popular and a must for any modern tattoo parlor. This set of the 8 flash sheets contains 100's of different images/characters! Line drawings are not included/available with this set.
which included this English to Chinese/Kanji tattoo translation sheet:
all for this price of:
U.S. $64.99
Hanzismatter also deciphered the tattoo writings like this:
But as they mention it's mostly all gibberish.
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Tattoo writing is not always identifiable. It is just a painting on the skin. Characters might be degenerated. But, it is not Chinese writing from its shape.
It looks like Siddhaṃ script which is used in Buddhist Sanskrit writing. There are lots of variants over centuries. Tibetan script is a variant of Siddhaṃ script too.
The best guess is the mantra, Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ (嗡嘛呢叭咪吽), also known as sadaksara (six syllabled, 六字真言). There is no unique interpretation of this mantra. It is about jewel and lotus.
The mantra is so widespread along with Buddhism and have been translated in various languages in the past.
