Name Tattoo Ideas: Children, Parents, Partners

What a name tattoo means

Name tattoos fall into a few families, and each has its own logic. A child's name is the safest of them, because the bond it marks does not end. Parents' names, and the words Mom, Dad and Mama, are the flash-sheet classics. A partner's name is the one tattooists warn about. The names of the dead are the ones made with the most care, and they are often written in the person's own hand.

A child's name usually arrives with a birth, which is why it so often carries something from that day: a footprint traced from the hospital card, the heartbeat line of a monitor, a date. The practical point is that it is rarely the last name. Parents who put the first child's name in the middle of the inner forearm tend to find, a couple of years later, that there is nowhere left for the second.

A partner's name is a promise made in ink, and there is an old superstition among tattooists that it curses the relationship. Some artists refuse the work outright, and more will ask, gently, how long you have been together. Some people want that permanence precisely because it is a risk; others get the same feeling from a date, a pair of initials or a small symbol only the two of them understand.

The name of someone who has died does something a symbol cannot: it is not a reading of the person but the person. That is why memorial names are so often copied from the person's own writing, a signature from a card or a line from a letter, and why pets get the same treatment, with a paw print and a halo beside a name like Buddy.

A name ages in two ways at once. The ink softens like any lettering, so a name set small in fine script will be heavier and less crisp in fifteen years. The meaning moves as well, and in different directions: a child's name gathers weight as the child grows up, a parent's eventually becomes a memorial, and a partner's is the only one that can turn into something the wearer wants gone.

Some names carry their own picture, and several designs here use it. Luna is Latin for moon and Leo is Latin for lion, so the crescent hooked into the L and the lion's head drawn out of the o say each name twice.

Where the design comes from

Names are among the oldest Western tattoos on record. British naval and convict records from the early nineteenth century already describe initials, names and dates pricked into the forearms of sailors and prisoners, and once professional shops opened in port cities the heart with a banner reading Mother became a staple of the flash sheet. Traditional flash often left the banner or scroll blank so that the artist could letter in whichever name the customer wanted, which is how the ribbon became the standard frame for a name. Altering a name is almost as old as tattooing one: the best-known case is Johnny Depp's Winona Forever, trimmed to Wino Forever after he and Winona Ryder separated in the early 1990s.

Choosing yours

• Spelling is the whole risk, and it is almost never the artist's mistake, since they copy exactly what they are given. Sofia or Sophia, Mateo or Matteo, Isabella or Isabela: check the version on the birth certificate or passport, type it out rather than saying it aloud, and read the stencil letter by letter before it goes on. Accents count as spelling. The Sofia on this page is written without one; if you mean Sofía, the accent has to be on the stencil, because a stroke is easy to add later and a wrong one cannot be taken off.
• Plan for the names that have not arrived yet. If more children, grandchildren or a second parent may follow, lay the first name where a second and third can sit beside or below it, in the same letterform and at the same height, so the set looks designed rather than accumulated. A printed typeface is far easier to match in five years than a hand-drawn script by an artist who has since moved away.
• Handwriting needs a decision about the wobble. A signature or a line from a birthday card is scanned and retraced by the artist, and a ballpoint line that varies with pressure becomes a needle line of one weight. Take all the unevenness out and it stops looking like their writing; keep all of it at a fine weight and the thinnest parts may not last.
• Short and long names need different handling. Mia, Leo and Liam can go small because three or four letters stay distinct from each other; SANTIAGO or Isabella at the same letter height is two or three times as long, so the height you want sets the width you need, and an eight-letter name in capitals quickly outgrows a wrist.

Common questions