"Dragon", "Forever", and "Tiger"
From reader "Andre":
"First of all I would like to say that your website is AMAZING! I'm Brazilian, and very fond of Japanese and Chinese culture. I intend to tattoo some kanji, but NOW I think it's wiser to ask you first, if you could be kind and CHECK if the following kanji really mean what I believe they mean. The first kanji is the "dragon":
The second and third are supposed to mean "forever":
Finally, the last one is the kanji for "tiger":
Are they right? Thanks in advance!!!"
The "dragon" character "Andre" has sent me is a Japanese simplification. To most Chinese (and other Asians), it does not have a significant meaning. Therefore if you had that tattoo on you, you might have to explain to a non-Japanese what it meant.
The traditional version of "dragon" is this: 龍
Word of advice: always get tattoos in traditional version of Kanji or Hanzi. Not only it is more beautiful and classic, also it is because only Mainland Chinese use the simplified version, and the rest are using traditional version.
The bottom character in "forever" is also a simplified version, the traditional version is this: 遠
The "tiger" character is wrongly written. It is missing a horizontal stroke, and here is the corrected version: 寅
The character itself actually means "3-5 a.m.; 3rd earthly branch" if it is not combined with "tiger" which is this: 虎
"First of all I would like to say that your website is AMAZING! I'm Brazilian, and very fond of Japanese and Chinese culture. I intend to tattoo some kanji, but NOW I think it's wiser to ask you first, if you could be kind and CHECK if the following kanji really mean what I believe they mean. The first kanji is the "dragon":
The second and third are supposed to mean "forever":
Finally, the last one is the kanji for "tiger":
Are they right? Thanks in advance!!!"
The "dragon" character "Andre" has sent me is a Japanese simplification. To most Chinese (and other Asians), it does not have a significant meaning. Therefore if you had that tattoo on you, you might have to explain to a non-Japanese what it meant.
The traditional version of "dragon" is this: 龍
Word of advice: always get tattoos in traditional version of Kanji or Hanzi. Not only it is more beautiful and classic, also it is because only Mainland Chinese use the simplified version, and the rest are using traditional version.
The bottom character in "forever" is also a simplified version, the traditional version is this: 遠
The "tiger" character is wrongly written. It is missing a horizontal stroke, and here is the corrected version: 寅
The character itself actually means "3-5 a.m.; 3rd earthly branch" if it is not combined with "tiger" which is this: 虎
posted by tian at
2:32 PM
4 Comments:
Tian,
Thanks again for your help in that subject. Just want to clear one thing: the kanjis for "dragon", "forever and "tiger" were not supposed to be used together. The idea was to make 3 differente tattoos, not a sentence!
Best regards,
Andre
I see the Japanese "dragon" 竜(ryuu/tatsu) character most often here in Japan. There are two sumo wrestlers though, including the guy-to-beat yokozuna, who use the traditional old Chinese dragon character in their names. Asashouryuu 朝青龍(morning blue dragon) and Asasekiryuu 朝赤龍(morning red dragon) use the more complicated and cool-looking character. Apologies if my posted kanji are gibberish.
-Travis
The information given here about the "*tiger" character is entirely incorrect. That final character really does not mean tiger at all. It is, as stated, one of the twelve signs of the chinese zodiac, which originally referred simply to geographic direction, and only later became associated with animals. It is only through this association that it has the meaning of tiger. By itself it is almost meaningless, and does NOT mean tiger. The proper character for tiger is 虎 as stated.
In addition, the character was given correctly by the original poster in the first place. The addition of a horizontal line essentially makes the character meaningless. There is no character that is the same except for the horizontal line. Which doesn't matter, since the character is the wrong one for tiger, anyway.
DeusExMachina, you basically just repeated everything that Tian had said, in length! And the last character is definitely INCORRECT, there is no such word. And it isn't completely meaningless writen on its own.
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