Kristina sent me this image below with this message:
"Hi, I am one those people who impulsively got a tattoo and naively believed it said what I wanted it to say. I was young. Now, 20 years later, I really want to know what it says and how I can fix it to say something meaningful. I was told that it was my initials, KH. I later had someone tell me that it said something roughly translated to "never stop flowing" referring to water. I would love to have something that actually did say something about flowing water. I always associated flowing water to seeking truth and knowledge. Water always flows toward a greater body of water. The tattoo is on the back of my neck, just left of center. I plan on getting a back tattoo of the rugged coast line with the ocean at some point in the future. I'd like to tie it all together."
Hi Kristina,
Here are the explanations of the individual characters:
The first character (on the left):
A watery waste; famine, barren - simplified character * see more on the differences between traditional and simplified character below
The second character (on the right):
To stop; prohibit; to cease, halt; until - simplified and traditional character
The bad news: It does not mean KH (there are no Chinese characters for English alphabet -- we would just use English alphabet). Instead, putting both characters together, it says "barren stop". In other words,
it doesn't mean anything at all.
The good news: Both characters are written correctly.
The semi-good news: If you put three more dots on the left character (see attached), it will become the word "a water way", "to flow" or "to drift" among a list of other meanings including "to move or circulate downwards", "to exude" or "class/style". The word will become a traditional character; and it will be okay because the second character on the right is used in both the simplified and traditional writing.
The semi-bad news: It will read something like
"flowing ceases" - in Chinese grammar it's still incorrect and does not mean anything.
With situations like this (not uncommon), I usually recommend clients to just forget about getting another Chinese character -- and either accept the current design for its looks alone (is it perhaps better to be a person who really does flow like water, rather than one who just has a tattoo that says they go with the flow?)... OR, if you're super unhappy with what other people might think of the tattoo, then you might talk to a tattooist about covering the whole thing with a pictograph.
* Note: The difference between
Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters:
Traditional - used in Hong Kong,
Taiwan and other overseas Chinese communities, longer history since 5th century AD.
Simplified - used in Mainland China and Singapore, shorter history, invented by the Communist leader Mao Zedong in China.
