Sword Tattoo Ideas, Designs and Meaning

What a sword tattoo means

Everything else in an armoury doubles as something. A spear hunts, an axe works timber, a bow puts food on a table, and a knife spends most of its life cutting rope. A sword has one purpose and no other, which is why it reads as commitment rather than as violence — it is the picture of a decision already taken.

Justice is the second and more specific meaning, and the detail people miss is that the figure of Justice carries both scales and a sword. The scales weigh and the sword enforces; judgement without the power to act on it is only an opinion. A sword worn for that reason is about consequence rather than about fairness.

The oath is the third. A medieval hilt is a cross — crossguard, grip and pommel — and knights swore on it because it was the cross nearest to hand. That accident of shape is the reason an upright sword still reads as a vow rather than as a threat, and it is why so many of these are worn point up.

Point down says something else entirely. Reversed arms, a blade driven into the ground, is the military sign of mourning and of a fight that has finished. Two designs identical in every other respect mean opposite things depending on which way the point is facing, and it is worth settling that before the stencil goes on.

Where the design comes from

The shape dates itself, which is unusual among tattoo subjects. A broad straight blade with a wide crossguard and a lobed pommel is European and roughly eleventh to thirteenth century; a slim blade inside a cage of curving steel bars is a sixteenth-century rapier; a curved single edge with a small round guard is a Japanese tachi or katana. Tokugawa-era Japan restricted sword-wearing to the samurai class, which is how the object stopped being equipment and became identity. The gladius a Roman legionary carried was under 60 cm, far shorter than most drawings of one. And the West has a single universal sword image because of Malory, whose Morte d'Arthur was printed by Caxton in 1485 — though the sword in the stone and the sword from the lake are two different weapons in that telling, which almost every retelling since has merged into one.

Choosing yours

• It is a long vertical and wants a field to match. The inner forearm, the spine and the calf all take a full-length blade without compressing it; a short field forces the artist to shrink the blade toward the grip, and a sword with a stubby blade is a dagger.
• Decide the period before the consultation. The pommel and the guard are what date the object, and if you do not choose, the default is a generic fantasy sword that belongs to no century — which is exactly what happens when a brief just says the word.
• Settle which way the point faces. Up is the oath and the readiness; down is mourning and the end of something. It is the cheapest decision in the whole design and the one that changes the meaning most.

Common questions