Simple Tattos

Your Name is What Brian and Angie

Tattooing your loved one's name in Hebrew is a very romantic gesture. Getting it wrong - not so much.


Today's victim wanted a Hebrew tattoo of his own name (Brian, on the right) and the name of his girl (Angie - on the left), unfortunately, he managed to misspell them both.

Brian - There's only one mistake, but a crucial one. He used the regular Nun insead of the final form (Nun Sofit). For letters which have a final form, the final form should always be used at the end of a word.

Angie - Some creative spelling here. 3 mistakes in one small word, phenomenal.

1. In English, G can be read two ways, as in "game" or as in "gentle". In old Hebrew, the sound G as in "gentle" or "Angie", didn't exist. In modern Hebrew it was artificially added by putting an apostrophe right after the letter Gimel. Do you see an apostrophe in that tattoo?
2. The author had a hard time figuring out the "ie" part of "Angie", and decided to use the Nikkud (vowels - look for dots in the tattoo) as if they were letters. Bad idea. In Hebrew you only apply vowels to letters, you never use them as a standalone, never apply them to an empty space. Overall, don't attempt Nikkud unless you know exactly what you're doing. Most native Hebrew speakers don't dare mess with it, so you shouldn't either!
3. Instead of that Nikkud disaster, the letter Yod should be used for the "ie" in "Angie".

This is how Brian is supposed to be written in proper Hebrew:

And this is Hebrew for Angie: