Misspelled Tattoos: Spelling Mistakes For Life
Typos happen. People misspell things. We all make mistakes, but you really should be extra careful when getting a tattoo. I mean a typo in your tattoo may not be forever the way it was before laser tattoo removal, but it is an expensive and painful spelling mistake to fix!
While there is no good reason to have a misspelled tattoo (or perhaps I should say a mispelled tatoo), there are plenty of excuses. Too many beers in too little time has got to be on that list somewhere, but if you weren’t drunk maybe some of the blame goes to eBay. I mean, there is a lot of tattoo equipment for sale on eBay. It is perfect for all those struggling young tattoo artists who can’t finish their GED to save some money. Of course we can hardly pick on tatto artists as the only poor spellers, misspelled eBay listings are so common this whole site is dedicated to finding them. But we aren’t about blame, we are about celebrating (and maybe poking a little fun at) the best misspelled tattoos of all time!
This Tattoo is a Tragedy and a Comedy!
I think these were in intended to show a love of drama, not to be a source of it! The tattoo would have been a cliche but the added misspelling makes it an original. The tattoo reads “tradgey comedy”, but the tragedy is that “tragedy” is misspelled. Now it’s also a comedy! The ever popular smile now cry later never had more truth to it.
Why Not Misspell your Tattoo Everyone Else is Doing it!
In this case literally. CNN reported that Joseph Beahm paid $100 for a tattoo. The tattoo was done by artist James Kastel at a Boardwalk tattoo parlor called Body Art World. The tattoo was supposed to read “Why Not, Everyone Else Does”, instead it came out as, “Why Not, Everyone Elese Does.” After finding out the tattoo was misspelled Joseph planned on suing the tattoo parlor to pay for his laser surgery. However Joseph lucked out after a New Jersey dermatology center offered to remove the misspelled word from the tattoo for free. Now that is something that not everyone else is doing!
Give Me Strength to Deal with a Misspelling on My Back and the Wisdom to Know What It Is.
“God give me the strength to change the things that need to change, the courage to accept the things which cannot be changed, and the wisdom to tell the difference” That’s what we think Martin Nolan wanted when he spent seven hours having a prayer tattooed in the middle of his back. The tattoo cost him £200 which is nearly $400. He was just trying to pay tribute to his mother Brenda, which is a real sweet thing to do. After all his time, patience, and pain, his friend spotted not one but TWO misspellings. In the prayer, strength was misspelled as strenght and wisdom misspelled as nisdom. The tattoo will give him the strenght and nisdom not to get another bad tattoo.
Lincoln Never Made this Many Typos
Old Abe may have made some spelling mistakes but there is no way he made this many! You thought the two errors in the last tattoo were bad? Can you spot the THREE errors in this tattoo? Don’t double check your tattoo… triple check. Friends, strained and surely are all misspelled, appearing as: freinds, straind, surley.
Misspellings need not be limited to English
BBC reported that Joanne Raine, a teenage girl who wanted to tattoo her lover’s name, got a little surprise as to what the tattoo actually read. She had the tattoo for months on her stomach before she learned what it really meant. In Chinese, instead of having her boyfriend’s nickname Roo, she found out the word actually meant supermarket. After paying $80 at the Skindeep Tattoo Parlour for her supermarket misspelled tattoo, it’s a bit too expensive to get it removed. At least her boyfriend’s nickname was short! “I did not think about whether it meant forever. I’m just going to have to keep it as I can’t afford to get another one done” . What is worse is that her and “Roo” are no longer dating.
Even Famous people can Misspell Tattoos in Another Language
Today, David Beckham is known for his soccer skills, LA lifestyle and his famous wife Victoria, the former spice girl. His desire to show his love for Victoria back in November 2000 led him to get a tattoo of her name on his left forearm. Beckham thought tattooing her name in English would be tacky, so he chose to do it in Hindi script. Unfortunately the tattoo ended up reading VIHCTORIA, which is especially surprising since, thanks to Queen Victoria the name is well know by Hindi speakers. Of course he is in good company with the long list of people who misspell their tattoos in foreign languages which is at least more understandable than making a spelling mistake in your native tongue.
Spelling is Awsome, Misspelling is Awesome!
We are not sure what this guy was thinking. Why would you put I’m Awesome on your back in the first place? I mean if you are that insecure, at least put it where you can see it. Of course we think misspelling his tattoo to read “I’m Awsome” really is awesome!
Fuck the System that Teaches you How to Spell
Fight the power! Don’t let the man brainwash you. So this guy felt the need to rebel against the “system” and all of its conventional behavior. Instead of having his tattoo say Fuck the System, his tattoo turned out to be “Fuck the Systsem”. Now that’s really sticking it to the man.
Tomorrow I’ll Learn How to Proofread
This tattoo had potential, almost poetry. A tattoo that would read “Tomorrow Never Knows” on your wrist isn’t too bad, kind of creative. However, since tomorrow is misspelled they’ve easily made our list. Their tattoo reads “Tomarrow Never Knows”. Tomarrow never knows how to spell tomorrow right…
Deal These Cards Again
It seems his cards weren’t dealt in his favor. The tattoo looks pretty cool, with of course, a few errors. The tattoo was supposed to read “It’s not the cards you’re dealt in life, it’s how you play them.” Instead his tattoo reads “Its not the cards your delt in life its how you play them”. Looks like he was dealt a bad hand.
Speaking of getting dealt a bad hand and a bad tattoo, see this goth and his hello kitty tattoo. At least there is nothing to misspell.
The ChiTonw Movement
Possibly the most popular of misspelled tattoos is Chi-Tonw. ABC reported about Sam Hacker, a tattoo artist, who made a misspelling on a tattoo. Instead of Chi-Town like the Chicago man requested, he got “Chi-Tonw”. The tattoo was on the chest of Michael Duplessis. After Michael Duplessis sued Sam Hacker, an uproar of Chicago support for the local tattoo artist was ignited. This went from t-shirts being made to as far as getting the tattoo misspelled on purpose to read Chi-Tonw.
Two Chi-Tonw Copy Cat Misspellings
With Sam Hacker’s overwhelming support with the Chi-Tonw scandal, the tattoo parlor he works at needs the same support. Alfonse Wingfield is the one of the latest victims of a misspelled tattoo. Mike Edrington, tattoo artist at Jade Dragon Tattoo parlor, misspelled tomorrow on the tattoo. The tattoo read “Tommorrow Never Promised Today. John P. R.I.P.” Neither person seemed to know how to actually spell tomorrow, but went along with the tattoo anyway. Even though both seem at fault a lawsuit has been filed. Maybe we will see more tattoos with tomorrow misspelled?
Did we miss your favorite misspelled tattoo? Leave a comment!
You might also enjoy our post on Bizarre and Misspelled eBay Auctions or you can try and find your own misspelled eBay bargains with our misspelled eBay listing search tool.
Tags: mispelling, mispelt, misspelling, spelling mistakes, tatoo, tattoo, typo, typos
August 12th, 2008 at 11:23 am
CHEWIE HAS A BUNCH OF TATTOOS BUT THEY’RE HIDDEN UNDER HIS FUR!! LooL361
August 12th, 2008 at 11:32 am
If you had looked up “awesome”, you would see that it can also be spelled “awsome”.
August 12th, 2008 at 11:33 am
The Smile Now/Cry Later tattoo is bad before the misspelling! lol
August 12th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
What’s a ’scandle’? Retards.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Muphry’s law dictates that you had to spell scandal as “scandle” in the final paragraph to balance the scales.
At least you can edit a web page.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
You missed a typo “its” in Deal These Cards Again.
August 12th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
and more irony is you are wrong in one of your corrections, you wrote:
The tattoo was supposed to read “It’s not the cards you’re dealt in life, its how you play them.”
–
actually it should be:
It’s not the cards you’re dealt in life, it’s how you play them.
August 12th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Technically, the sanskrit/hindi text reads vhikţoriya. The H in this case would be silent, so it would seem to be correct. Although the choice of a guttural t instead of a straight up t is dubious. I think the confusion arises from the initial I not connecting with the base of the Ha completely; I would think though, that if you know something about Sanskrit you’d be able to deduce the meanig. I am not though, a Sanskrit linguist!
August 12th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Actually it’s worse than VIHCTORIA; that spells HIVTORIA.
August 12th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
No, VIHACTORIYA
August 12th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Your makeing a lot of Chi-Tonwians realy sad! I hope you’r hapy now! Stupid prikc.
August 12th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
One says “Why not [knife] everyone Elese does?”* Obviously his ex-girlfriend is named Elese, and he’s hell-bent on revenge! Or, in this case, “revenege!”
(* Should be “everyone *whom* Elese does,” but that oversight is forgivable in colloquial tattoo English.)
August 12th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Come on, give Beckham a break - sorry to be not funny, but the transliteration of Victoria into Devanagari is correct. There’s no V sound in Hindi so they approximate it with the conjunct character va + ha. The k and t is the same spelling they use for the English word doctor so that seems OK as well.
August 12th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
“Muphry’s law.” LoL
August 12th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
they all misspelled one word: MORON
August 12th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Personally my favorite are the Chinese characters (energy, power, etc) which were tattooed in reverse (mirror-image).
August 12th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Beckhams tattoo spells ‘Whictoria’. Which is how Indians spell Victoria. Since indians do not have a letter for V in their script, they spell it by fusing the W and H together… so it would actually be ‘Whictoria’. In my opinion it is not a problem of misspelling, but a problem of trying to spell a word that originated in another language. Another example would be the word ‘Fox’. again, the devanagari script does not have an F in their script so, they fuse the P and H together… so that the spelling would actually read ‘Phox’.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
This is why only morons get tattoos…..
August 12th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
LOL, this is not saying much for the person who GOT the tattoo either seeing as usually the tattoo is first stenciled on BEFORE its actually inked. Dummies.
JT
http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com
August 12th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
When I graduated from 8th grade in 1972 I wanted to buy a 3 piece suit to wear to the ceremony. My mother (in a typical display of workin’ class, beer guzzlin’ gold chain wearin’ taste) bought me a leisure suit. At age 12 I recognized that this was the epitome of bad taste, and that I would forever be haunted by photos of me wearing that atrocity.
The point: A tattoo is a leisure suit that you can never take off.
August 12th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
“This is why only morons get tattoos…”
So by your logic, morons only get tattoos because a select few contain misspellings? That makes no sense. It’d be more appropriate to say only a moron would get a tattoo that’s misspelled.
August 12th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I’m sorry guys, but regarding the Devanagari all these comments are only half true. There is a letter VA in Devanagari, it is transliterated into english as a W depending on it’s context whether it be a soft or a hard V. (i.e. (Uvaca, “U-Va-Cha”) or (Svaha, “Swaha”))
The point is, though (and which I do agree with you on) that that particular spelling is in no way shape or form incorrect. READ IT AGAIN: That tattoo is perfectly fine.
And to the other poster that commented that it was VHAI, it is not, since the I takes the place of the vowel A after the consonant VH.
And to correct myself, the T that was chosen is actually retroflex. Must have sounded good to the tattoo artist.
August 12th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
If you give american dollars me I tattoo wrong words on my fronthead.
August 12th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
yeah david beckham’s tattoo doesn’t say vihctoria, instead it says vhictoria, which is just sort of weird.
August 12th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Joe: No, you’re wrong. Awesome cannot also be spelled “awsome.” The fact that thousands of ignorant people misspell it doesn’t change that. The root of the word is “awe” which is never spelled “aw” and no real dictionary would tell you otherwise.
August 12th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Its Awesome… Awsome is totally Fuct… you know what I’m sayin’?
It’s proper compared to lazy/slang…
August 12th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Bekcham’s misspelled tattoo of Victoria in Hindi reminds of a joke. A white woman gets a tattoo of a beautiful chinese calligraphy from a Menu card. She later finds out that the letters meant ” Cheap but Tasty”.BTW all misspellings hereare intended
August 12th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
“What’s worse is that SHE (not “her”) and Roo are no longer dating.”
“That” introduces a new sentence, which must begin with the subject case of the pronoun.
August 12th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
–“What’s worse is that SHE (not “her”) and Roo are no longer dating.”
“That” introduces a new sentence, which must begin with the subject case of the pronoun.–
Only a douchebag comments on grammar in a blog.
August 12th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
I’ve never understood the idea of getting words in a language you don’t know permanently penned on your body. I have two tats, neither of which contain letters. However, if I chose to get some chick’s name inscribed on my arm, you can be damned sure it will be in English…unless she’s Asian, in which case bring it on. I’m sure she would know how to write her own name in her own native tongue.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. I do have one bit of ink that some women think is another woman’s name. It’s on my penis, and it appears to say ‘Wendy’. However, they all soon realize it says ‘Welcome to Texas, have a nice day’.
August 13th, 2008 at 1:19 am
Take my photo off here, you ass blaster! I’m not the one you think I am.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:25 am
Tattoos ARE stupid. They used to be limited to the military and bikers back when they had meaning. Now every overweight soccer mom has a butterfly on her ass. When I get tired of looking at a painting on my wall, I put up a new one. I’ve never seen anything I would want to look at forever. Not to mention they always look worse over time. I’ve seen worse mistakes than the misspelled ones here. How about a nice bar code of your name tattooed on your arm? Maybe a nice knock knock joke? Mickey Mouse? I got it! Get a tattoo that lists the names of your 3 kids. Awesome, now your a rebel.
August 13th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Don’t be hatin people! I grew up in that awsome place called chi-Tonw. there was a local supermarket on the corner called VIHCTORIA’s where you could get fuct by the systsem. It was a great place to live. These people are not wearing mistakes they are all just my neighbors. Here you and your neighbor don’t know what tomarrow will bring.
It might be Tradgey It might be freinds it might even be something everyone elese has.
So don’t be a Moran and Leave britney alone!
August 13th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Is ‘brenda’ misspelled as “BREDA” in the prayer tattoo, aswell?
August 16th, 2008 at 6:06 am
the tat with toMARrow is probably the guys ex, with mar being her name and the only way to cover it without a big black mark on his arm was to have a mis-spelling.
my local artist uses a black rose band to cover names. i think it would’ve looked better
August 16th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
What a bunch of idiots. That’s what happens when your tattoos are done by people who probably didn’t graduate from high school.
August 18th, 2008 at 12:35 am
I think ALL Chinese tattoos really say “stupid Americans.”
August 18th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Ok seriously, who the fuck doesn’t know how to spell easy words like that. I mean DURRRRRRR. It’s really funny because now people can see how retarded they are for the rest of their life HAHA.
August 19th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
This is hilarious. A few years ago they caught a Chinese guy doing it on purpose- Instead of “love” they left with “moron”, etc.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:58 pm
thats wayy too funy
August 25th, 2008 at 7:27 am
if you are not sure about the spelling stay away from words……… in that case stay away from tattoo’s, you shouldn’t get tattoos if you never got passed the second grade lol
August 26th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
You spelled tattoo wrong in your first paragraph! No, I’m not talking about the one in parenthesis, either. Look: “Of course we can hardly pick on tatto artists as the only poor spellers,”. tatto?! Ironic!!
August 26th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
And why didn’t the teenage girl pick up on it right away? ‘Roo’ has 2 characters that are the same, and there are 3 different ones on her. Well, we knew she was stupid when she decided to get her lover’s name permanently on her. We all know that who we love when we are a teenager always ends up being the one we’re with forever. Oh wait, it’s the exact opposite that’s true.
September 1st, 2008 at 9:31 am
Tattoos are cool. They are a part of your life that was special. Eveytime you look at it, you remember when,why, and where. I have many and one for instance is Yo Samity Sam. I was 18 and would never change a thing.
September 5th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
“What’s worse is that SHE (not “her”) and Roo are no longer dating.”
Don’t get your significant other’s name. Pay for a billboard on Valentine’s Day, have your marriage proposal done on the side of a blimp, bring him or her breakfast in bed every day for ten years but never have your boyfriend’s, girlfriend’s, or spouse’s name tattooed. It is the number one reason why people regret their tattoo later. Tattoo Design Ideas http://www.tattoobody.org
October 20th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
LMAO!! I could laugh all day…or should I say lauhg alldaye.