"Giant Coral"
From reader "Darren Z.":
"Hi Tian, Love your Hanzi Smatter blog; BS tattoo characters must be for readers of Chinese what engrish instruction manuals are to readers of English... except more personally damning. On that note, I submit this stamp my ex-girlfriend had made for me when she went to HK. Is it bullshit or not? I haven't the foggiest. For the sake of comedy, I actually kinda hope it's something super-lame. Thanks, and keep up the good work."
The stamp Darren has is indeed hard to understand. Since it also has his initals, therefore I assume the characters represent his name.
If the characters are read from left to right, they are:
珊 = coral
高 = high, tall; lofty, elevated
Phonetically in Cantonese they sounded like:
"SAAN1" "GOU1"
and in Mandarin Chinese, they sounded like:
"SHAN1" "GAO1"
Like Darren said, for the sake of comedy, if he ever decides to become a Westerner superstar in China, he should use "Great Coral" as his stage name. Just like Da Shan.
posted by tian at
1:29 AM
5 Comments:
Hi dear Tian,thanks for email.I tried more and more about that tattoo and finally found that it is in Arabic and it means passionate and/or ardent love and also its a name for females.Arabic language is a little similar to Farsi specially in alphabets.Anyway,thanks again and also for your great job.
Man
menzroum@yahoo.com
www.mensroom.blogspot.com
The word 高 is a common last name, and the word 珊 is also commonly used as girl's first name. Traditional Chinese can be read from right to left. Therefore the result could be a common female name who's last name is 高.
The sender Darren stated that "I submit this stamp my ex-girlfriend had made for me when she went to HK."
Shan(珊) is a girls name (its part of my name). lol. But some of my friends call me Da Shan (大珊) and I get so angry cause it sounds so 难听.
When read in Japanese it's "sankou" which sounds similar to "珊瑚" -- "coral". Yes, I realize it was done in Hong Kong.
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