Strength? You'll Need It!

Today's victim really did try. She even asked an Israeli friend to provide the correct translation for her Hebrew tattoo, but to no avail. Tattoos done in Hebrew just have a special way of always going wrong...

This Hebrew tattoo, which was discovered and sent in by Leor, is supposed to say "Lord give me strength". I have to admit, it is grammatically correct. Out poor victim made the mistake of trying to render it vertically, though, all by herself. Bad idea!

Below is how "Lord give me strength" is supposed to be written in Hebrew. They're the exact same words as in the tat. Can you spot what went wrong?

Mistake #1: This Hebrew tattoo is backwards. Unlike English, Hebrew is written right-to-left, so the rightmost letter should be on top, in a vertical tattoo.

Mistake #2: Letter Yod is not an apostrophe! Yod is the shortest letter, but it's still a letter, and as such, it deserves its own line when written vertically. In this tattoo, all Yods have to share their living space with other letters :(

Mistake #3: Some letters were replaced by other, similar looking letters. So you can very well read the word "Ten" (give) as "Chen" (grace), and you can read "Koach" (strength) as either "Noach" (comfy) or "Moach" (brain). Yeah, this tattoo could absolutely be read as "Lord give me brains".

Vertical Hebrew tattoos? Kids, don't do them!

Who Saved You? And Where?

Remember the Girl for Free? Today's tattoo, while not quite as horrible, is right up that alley.

This guy went for double trouble. On the left was supposed to be "Saved by Grace", while on the right "John 3:16" in Hebrew. I can tell you right away that his tattoos say nothing of the sort.

The John tattoo is something weird. Quite unreadable, but it definitely doesn't say John nor Yohanan (as the book of John is called in Hebrew). It says Yagan or Saban or maybe even Anne...

The Grace tattoo, however, is far more interesting. See, there isn't always correlation between Hebrew and English word meanings. And so, while "Saved" in English has all sorts of meanings, Hebrew uses different words for save (rescue) and save (put money aside). I bet you can tell which word our victim used.

Basically, instead of "Saved by Grace", this tattoo reads along the lines of "Saved by Mercy [in her bank account]". Yeah, "Grace" is wrong too.

Now, this is how you properly write "Saved by Grace" in Hebrew:

And "John 3:16":

Puzzle Girl Gets Random Tattoo

For some, getting a plain old Hebrew tattoo is not enough, they just have to be creative. Check out Puzzle Girl here, can you tell what she was going for?


This genius of creativeness got 3 random words, but she couldn't write them right-to-left like normal people, oh no. She wrote them from top to bottom and didn't bother to space the words apart. It looks like one of those how-many-words-can-you-find puzzles, who cares for a game?

Curious about her original Hebrew words?

Mashal - either Story or He Reigned
Tsedek - Justice
Racham - Either Egyptian Vulture or a bastardized form of Mercy

Did I say random?

Something from Alien

Some bad Hebrew tattoos are just too funny. Take this one, for example. This victim wanted a tattoo of her kid's name "Noah James", and so she got this:


I'm sorry to report that this hardly says "Noah James". Roughly translated, it actually reads "Hatch with Comfort" in Hebrew. This new meaning is totally coincidental, and creepily reminds me of Alien.


So what went wrong here?

The first name, Noah, is actually correct, assuming that you accept its Hebrew pronunciation - NO-akh. However, it was placed as the second word. Remember, Hebrew is written right-to-left, the first word should be on the right.

The second name, James, is simply bogus. Whoever composed this, probably had no clue how to write James in Hebrew. Solution? Take a different name - Jacob, and flip it backwards. Voila!


So, this is how you write "Noah James" in Hebrew. I've written two versions - the top features the Hebrew pronunciation of Noah (NO-akh), on the bottom is the English one (NO-ah).