What tattoos mean

By what you want it to say

Each of these answers one question with several motifs, and says why each one carries it.

• Mother and daughter

  Designs that work as a matching pair for a mother and daughter, what each says, and how to split a drawing across two people so both halves still read alone.

• Matching

  Designs made to be worn by two or more people, what each one says, and the rules that decide whether a matching set still reads as a set in ten years.

• Family

  Designs that stand for family, what each one says, and how to pick one that can absorb another name, another child or another generation without being redrawn.

• Couples

  Designs for two people, what each one says, and the honest version of how a couples tattoo ages — including what to avoid so it never needs covering.

• Best friend

  Matching designs for friends, what each one says, and how to pick one that reads as friendship rather than as a couples tattoo.

• Siblings

  Matching designs for brothers and sisters, what each one says, and how to build a set that works for two, three or more without anyone getting a lesser piece.

• Meaningful

  What tattoo motifs actually mean, where the meanings come from, and how to choose one that still says what you wanted in twenty years.

• Memorial

  Designs that mark someone you lost, what each one says, and the practical decisions — timing, lettering, placement — that memorial pieces turn on.

• Strength

  Designs that stand for strength, what each one actually claims, and why the quiet ones tend to say it better than the obvious ones.

• Love

  Designs that stand for love, what each one says, and why the traditional versions keep the difficult parts in.

• Faith

  Devotional designs, what each one says and which tradition it comes from, and how to choose one that is specific rather than generic.

• Mental health

  Designs that mark recovery, survival and ongoing struggle — what each one says, who will recognise it, and how to choose one you will still want.

• Peace

  Designs that stand for peace, calm and balance, what each one says, and why the symmetric ones are far harder to place than they look.

• Luck

  Designs that stand for luck and fortune, where each superstition comes from, and which ones carry a second meaning you might not intend.

• Resilience

  Designs that mark having come through something, what each one says, and why these age better than any other category of meaningful tattoo.

• Growth

  Designs that mark change, growth and starting again, what each one says, and how to pick one that can be added to as more changes come.

• Forever

  Designs that stand for permanence and eternity, what each one says, and the honest version of what "forever" means on skin that keeps changing.

• Freedom

  Designs that stand for freedom and independence, what each one says, and the difference between freedom from something and freedom to do something.

• Christian

  What the Bible says about tattoos, which images carry Christian meaning without being generic, and how devotional work is drawn so it still reads decades later.

• Scar cover-up

  Which designs hide a scar and which make it more visible, how long to wait before tattooing one, and the scar types a responsible artist will refuse outright.

• Wedding

  Ring-finger tattoos fade faster than anywhere else on the body. What that means in practice, and the designs and placements that survive a lifetime of wear.

• Greek mythology

  Medusa, Icarus, Athena's owl and the rest — what each figure was actually a story about, which is usually not what the tattoo is sold as.

• Father and daughter

  Pairs that survive being worn by two people with very different taste and very different tattoos, and how to keep them looking related when the sizes are not.

• Halloween

  The gothic motifs that hold up all year, which seasonal designs stop working on the second of November, and how to get the atmosphere without the costume.

• Spiritual

  Symbols borrowed from traditions people do not practise, what each one meant where it came from, and how to tell reverence from decoration.

• Protection

  Why nearly every protective symbol in the world is an eye, what each one was meant to stop, and how to choose one that is specific rather than decorative.

By motif

The one-line reading for every design we publish. Each links to the full meaning, the history behind it, and the designs themselves. The same symbols, grouped by what they say — strength, protection, love, loss, rebirth — are on tattoo symbols and their meanings.

Wave

A wave is the most honest thing you can wear about not being in control.

Peony

In Japanese work the peony is the "king of flowers", and the meaning attached to it is not delicacy but standing: wealth, good fortune, and a kind of bravery that does not need to announce itself.

Abstract

An abstract tattoo means whatever you decide it means, and that is not a dodge — it is the actual appeal.

Rose

The rose is the most-tattooed flower in the Western tradition, and it carries more than one meaning at once.

Cross

A cross is the most-worn symbol in tattooing and the least specific, which is exactly why people choose it.

Snake

The snake is the most reliably double-edged animal in tattooing.

Butterfly

Transformation is the obvious reading and the true one, but it is not the whole of it.

Lion

The lion is a status animal, and it has been one for longer than almost any other tattoo subject.

Tiger

The tiger is the counterweight to the lion.

Phoenix

The phoenix is the recovery tattoo.

Lotus

The lotus means something quite precise, and it is not simply purity.

Owl

The owl is the wisdom bird in the Western reading, and that comes from a specific place: the little owl was the companion of Athena, and it appeared on Athenian coinage for centuries.

Compass

A compass is a direction tattoo, and it is usually worn by someone who has been without one.

Anchor

The anchor is stability, and specifically stability supplied by someone else — the person, place or commitment that holds you when conditions do not.

Cherry Blossom

The cherry blossom means mortality, and it means it more directly than almost any other flower.

Flower

Flowers are the largest single category in tattooing and the least specific, which is both the appeal and the problem.

Sunflower

The sunflower means loyalty, and the reason is literal rather than poetic.

Sun

The sun is the oldest symbol in tattooing that still means roughly what it always meant: life, renewal, and the thing everything else is measured against.

Star

A star is guidance, and specifically guidance for someone who is somewhere unfamiliar.

Dragonfly

The dragonfly means change, and it earns the meaning more literally than most symbols.

Hummingbird

The hummingbird means living intensely rather than living long.

Clock

A clock is about time being finite, and it is one of the few tattoo subjects that is nearly always about mortality even when the wearer describes it as something else.

Tree

A tree is the standard image for family and for time, and it holds both at once because of its shape: roots below, branches above, one trunk connecting them.

Raven

The raven is an intelligence symbol before it is a death symbol, and people who choose one usually know that.

Bird

Birds mean freedom, and that is so widely understood that it is worth going one level deeper before choosing one.

Shark

The shark means forward motion, and the reason is anatomical.

Infinity

The infinity symbol means without end, and it is worn most often for a bond rather than for a concept — a marriage, a sibling, a child.

Leaf

A leaf is a season rather than a statement, and that is its appeal.

Skull

A skull is not about death so much as about knowing you will die, and those are different claims.

Wolf

The wolf means loyalty and belonging, and the two most popular readings of it are both based on research that has since been retracted.

Angel

An angel is a protection image, and in tattooing it is overwhelmingly a memorial one.

Heart

The heart is the most-tattooed symbol in the world and the one that most rewards a specific version.

Eye

An eye means being watched, and the whole question is by whom and whether that is comforting.

Mandala

A mandala is a meditation object before it is a pattern.

Feather

A feather means lightness and release, and it is one of the most common memorial motifs in Western tattooing — a found feather is widely read as a sign from someone who has died, and a feather with a name or date is almost always that piece.

Vine

A vine means growth that needs something to grow on, and that dependency is the whole point rather than a weakness in the metaphor.

Medusa

Medusa has been read two opposite ways and both are live.

Semicolon

In writing, a semicolon is the one mark that joins two clauses that could each have stood alone.

Spider

The spider is patience rather than menace.

Bear

Protection is the dominant modern reading, and it comes from behaviour rather than from myth.

Hourglass

An hourglass is the only common motif that contains its own measurement.

Woman portrait

Most portrait work is about a specific person, and what it means is private by definition.

Spider web

The reading is about repetition rather than about catching anything.

Panther

The panther entered tattooing as a symbol of controlled power rather than of aggression.

Mermaid

To sailors a mermaid was not romantic.

Yin-yang

The claim is interdependence, not balance in the comfortable sense.

Music note

A music tattoo is almost always about a specific piece, person or period rather than about music generally.

Deer

A stag is the animal of renewal through loss.

Peacock

The peacock stands for renewal in the oldest traditions that use it, because it sheds and regrows its train every year.

Pisces

The sign is a statement about being pulled two ways at once and staying whole.

Scorpio

Scorpio claims intensity rather than aggression.

Aries

Aries is the first sign, and the reading is beginning rather than dominance.

Moon

The moon means change on a schedule, which is what separates it from every other transformation motif.

Dragon

The eastern dragon is a water creature and a benevolent one.

Eagle

The eagle is the oldest state symbol still in use, and that is most of what it carries.

Dog

A dog tattoo is almost never about dogs.

Crown

A crown says authority, and the interesting question is always whose.

Jesus

The face of Christ is the most requested image and the most demanding.

Samurai

The samurai stands for a code rather than for combat, and that is the distinction people are usually reaching for.

Octopus

The octopus is the most alien intelligence a person is likely to meet.

Turtle

The turtle means long life in a way that is literal rather than symbolic.

Viking

The Norse material carries a specific idea that most heroic imagery does not: fate is fixed and courage is how you meet it.

Cloud

The cloud is the standard image for impermanence, and it earns it more honestly than most.

Cat

The cat has carried opposite meanings for two thousand years and still does.

Elephant

The elephant carries memory more than strength, and the reputation is broadly earned.

Scorpion

A scorpion is a warning, and that is the whole of its appeal.

Fish

A fish is the oldest symbol of abundance there is, and it works because it is literal.

Koi

The koi carries one legend and it is worth knowing properly.

Memento mori

The phrase is Latin for "remember that you must die", and it is an instruction rather than an observation.

Icarus

The myth is usually quoted as a warning about ambition, and that reading is real but incomplete.

Virgin Mary

Mary is the most reproduced female figure in western art and she is not one subject but several.

Aztec

The single most reproduced object is the calendar stone, and it is not a calendar.

Archangel

Michael is the one people mean, even when they do not know his name.

Angel wings

Wings without a body are an absence made visible.

Santa Muerte

She is petitioned rather than feared, which is the fact most outsiders miss.

Ghost

The ghost is the friendliest way to carry a death.

Evil eye

The belief is older than any of the religions that carry it.

Dandelion

The seed head is a picture of letting go that happens to be literally true.

Daisy

The daisy is the flower of innocence and it earned the association honestly.

Moth

The moth flying into the flame is the whole of its symbolism and it is more precise than it looks.

Skeleton

The skeleton is the only death image that can still act.

Skeleton Hand

Every other death symbol in tattooing is passive.

Sword

Everything else in an armoury doubles as something.

Ouroboros

Most symbols need a convention to be read.

Lily

The purity reading comes almost entirely from Christian painting.

Bee

The bee stands for work, but of a particular kind: work that is not for yourself.

Dagger

Distance is the whole difference.

Mountain

The appeal is permanence, and it is almost the only subject in tattooing that offers it plainly.

Fire

Earth, air and water persist whether or not anyone attends to them.

Goat

The animal has a genuinely good reputation that the occult version has almost buried.

Taurus

Taurus is the sign of staying put.

Gemini

Gemini is the sign of two minds in one person.

Cancer

Cancer is the sign of home.

Leo

Leo is the Sun's own sign, and astrology hands it the Sun's qualities: warmth, pride, generosity, a wish to be seen and a loyalty that is fierce once given.

Virgo

Virgo is the sign of care taken over things.

Libra

Libra is the one sign in the zodiac that is a thing rather than a living creature, and that changes what it says.

Sagittarius

Sagittarius is the traveller's sign, and the reading most people mean by it is aim rather than attack: an arrow already loosed at something a long way off.

Capricorn

Capricorn is a creature that exists nowhere else, the front half a goat and the back half a fish, and the reading most people mean comes straight out of that body.

Aquarius

Aquarius is an air sign, and most people assume it is a water sign.

Fern

The fiddlehead is the heart of it.

Griffin

A griffin is a guardian before it is anything else.

Guitar

A guitar tattoo is almost never about music in general.

Hawk

The difference from an eagle is the difference between a flag and a companion.

Leopard

A leopard is chosen for its pattern as much as for the animal.

Ocean

The ocean and the wave share water and answer different questions.

Unicorn

A unicorn is a horse with one change, and everything it means lives in that change.

Lips

Lips sit between the heart and the rose and mean something neither can.

Paw print

A paw print is the one animal tattoo that is not a picture of an animal.

Tree of life

The difference from an ordinary tree is scale.

Broken heart

A plain heart says love and stops there.

Fox

A fox is cleverness without power.

Ladybug

The name is a dedication.

Horse

Unlike the lion or the wolf, the horse is a partner rather than a wild creature with a meaning laid over it.

Tulip

A tulip is mostly worn for love, and its colour does the talking.

Sugar skull

A sugar skull is not a picture of death in general.

Orchid

Orchids have carried opposite reputations in different places, and a tattoo inherits whichever one its wearer means.

Buddha

Buddha is a title rather than a name.

Pin-up

A pin-up is a type rather than a person: a woman drawn at the moment she knows she is being looked at, with a wink, a raised heel or a hem caught by the wind.

Fairy

Before they were small and pretty, fairies were feared.

Pirate

A pirate tattoo is worn for the legend, not the men.

Birth flower

A birth flower works like a birthstone that grows.

Poppy

Two readings run through the poppy, one ancient and one a little over a century old.

Chrysanthemum

In China the chrysanthemum is the flower of autumn and of a long life.

Laugh now cry later

The two faces are one person at two times.

Crown of thorns

The crown was an insult before it was a symbol.

Crucifix

The difference from a plain cross is exact.

Awareness ribbon

An awareness ribbon is a pledge of attention rather than a symbol with a meaning of its own.

Angel of death

The angel of death is a messenger, not a harvester.

Pet portrait

A pet portrait is a likeness of one animal that other people will never check, and that is both its freedom and its trap.

Warrior

Few people wear a warrior to celebrate fighting.

Gun

Tattooing prefers old guns.

Snake dagger

A snake alone can mean renewal or danger, and a dagger alone readiness or betrayal.

Egyptian

These are the images of a religion that ended.

Filler

Filler is a job description rather than a motif.

Armband

An armband is a format before it is a picture.

Western

A western tattoo is less one symbol than a working kit.

American flag

A flag tattoo is worn for one of three things, and this page holds all of them.

Claw

A claw is what an animal fights, climbs and holds with, so a tattoo of one shows strength at the point where it does its work rather than as a whole beast.

Galaxy

The word is Greek for milky.

Lantern

A lantern is a flame given walls.

Rose window

A rose window is light put in order.

Whale

The first thing a whale says is size without menace.

Jellyfish

What a jellyfish offers is survival without force.

Frog

The first meaning is change you can watch.

Mushroom

A mushroom is the smallest visible part of a much larger thing.

Diamond

The name is the first meaning.

Lettering

Choosing a typeface is choosing a tone of voice before anyone has read the word.

Name

Name tattoos fall into a few families, and each has its own logic.

Script

Script is chosen because it looks written rather than printed.

Quote

A quote is a borrowed sentence, chosen because someone else said the thing better or because age has given it weight.

Roman numeral

A Roman numeral tattoo is nearly always a date, and the date is nearly always about one person: a birth, a wedding, the day someone died, the year a child arrived.

Number

The most searched number tattoos are angel numbers: one digit repeated three or four times, read as a sign that a guardian or the universe is paying attention.

Memorial lettering

RIP is the most compressed memorial there is: three letters and no picture.

Constellation

Most constellation tattoos mark a person rather than the sky: a birth sign drawn as its stars instead of its glyph, the stars that stood over a town on the night of a birth or a death, or one named star.

Hand symbol

An open hand held up with the palm outward is the oldest way of saying stop, and the protective hand symbols are built on it.

Praying hands

Praying hands say that someone is praying, and the question the design leaves open is for whom.

Swallow

A swallow is a promise to come back.

Candle

Of all the memento mori objects, the candle is the one that measures.

Demon

Start with the hannya, the face most people mean and most often misread.

Arrow

Direction is the plainest reading.

Bull

Strength is the reading everyone expects, and the animal earns it.

Key

A key means access, and the interesting part is always access to what.

Ship

On a sailor the ship was a record before it was a symbol.

Lightning

Lightning is the oldest picture of a force nobody argues with.

Grim reaper

The reaper is death with work to do.

Planet

The word is Greek, planētēs, a wanderer: the few lights that moved against the fixed stars.

Ring

A ring is a promise with no ends, which is why it has marked marriage for two thousand years; Roman betrothal rings were often plain iron.