Lotus Flower, Kanji

[littlenugget]

Hi, all. I'll be visiting Japan next month and plan on getting a tattoo while there. I'd like to get lotus flower written on me. I'm currently learning Japanese. So far I'm familiar with hiragana and katakana, but I don't know any kanji. Is lotus flower/renge always written in kanji? Do people in Japan ever write things in hiragana instead of using the kanji symbols? I'm just wondering if it would be stupid of me to ask the tattoo artist to write in hiragana instead of kanji.


By the way, am I correct? Lotus flower = renge?

[StonerPenguin]

蓮華 
or
 蓮花
And yes れんげ is correct.

Oh yeah, I'm not a native speaker; just a student with a dictionary. So, my advice ain't absolute. Check it with someone else before you get your body marked permanently...

[ryuurui]

It may be done in hiragana as well, especially that れんげ reading (to my knowledge) does not have any other homophones, which means it will be associated with 蓮華. Are you getting a tattoo of a computer font or will you go for calligraphy? To give you an example of what is the difference between calligraphy and printed font (活字) is here you have few works of mine:

花 flower






愛華　Aika (female name which means: love flower)




If you need calligraphy you can send me a PM, I am located in Tokyo.

[siokan]

ハスの花 or 蓮の花 or 蓮花 or 蓮華

common　ハスの花 , 蓮の花
Very formal alias　蓮花
Old alias　蓮華
蓮華 has Soup spoon and the possibility to be misunderstood.
Soup spoon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
another name 水芙蓉 , 芙蓉 , 不語仙 , 池見草 , 水の花
芙蓉 is the same as the name of Hibiscus mutabilis.
There is a case where the Chinese character of 蓮 is replaced with 荷, too.

[ryuurui]

Great info siokan. 不語仙 is my favourite. Great imagery. I think i am going to write that one.

Ceramic soup spoon is a reference to a fallen lotus petal (散り蓮華), so i would not think that it might be understood this way, but then again, i am not a native speaker, so can't really argue with that. It's more of the issue of how you guys sense it.