Name translation for japanese tattoo.
 

Hi all,

I am new here...
But i hope you can and are willing to help me.

My dog died last week, and i want an japanese tattoo with her name in it.
The question i have is: Did i spell her name right in katakana?
Her name was tessie...



Thx in advance

Hey what a coincidence my sisters dog is called tessie. Sry about ur loss. Ill look into it tho.

Thank you and yes that is a coincidence....

Sorry to hear about your dog.

The katakana is basically right but the final character there is the kanji for "one" rather than the "chouon" mark you intended, so it looks a bit odd typographically.

How about waiting a little while before deciding to get the tattoo though?

The katakana would be read Te-shii rather than tessie though, but that is as close as you can get in Japanese.

@ben: What i understood is that the final char in the "ー" marks an extended vowel. And why should i wait with the tattoo?

@Hideo: Yes i understood that it would be te-shi, and that this is the closest u get to the real name.

But i am glad i found out that the katakana spelling is what i was hoping it would be.

There are actually two "ー" characters in japanese. One's the extension the other is an actual kanji meaning one. To an experienced eye they can be clearly distinguished from each other, especially in brush-type scripts like you posted (although I personally see the one you posted as an extension.) Basically the former is literally just a straight line and the kanji has a little flick at the right-hand end although in a lot of typing they're pretty much identical.

Try and find a tattooist who knows a modicum of japanese if you can; it'll look more natural if he 'writes' it rather than 'draws' it.

テシー kana that shows a long sound: Tessie (teshii).
テシ一 kanji meaning number 1:Tesi1 (Teshi ichi). Noticed that I wrote on purpose Tesi, because by changing the last character it changes the way you sound the word.

Hope this clarify what they meant.

I would write it :

テッシ

You can transliterate it either as:テッシ（ー）or テッセィ～～
And you may chose 2/3 kanji characters instead in order to look more like a 'tattoo', since they are more complex:S
You may choose a character with the reading "tetu" and another one with the reading "shi". When you combine'em 2gether, they might become Tesshi

@Columbine and chryuop: Thank you i understand the difference between the 2 characters.

@Harumaki: Is that a better way to write is? And what does it sound like? And groeten from pijnacker hier :p

@hatsuto11: I see you write it the same way as Harumaki does. I understood that translating non japanese names in kanji was a no no and that katakana always is prefered.

Now i have another followup question:
Is it allowed to write it like this?

テ
ッ
シ

or if i use my original idea

テ
シ
ー

Let's let the madness stop here. Unless your do was Japanese and you gave it a name with kanji, this would just be silly. Posthumous name changes are reserved for royalty.

But I agree, why not wait a couple weeks and decide if this is still a good idea?

This tattoo is being inked on 19 march...
I want it, and this is not my first anyway.

I only want to get the writing correct, there are to many people walking around with nonsense on their body. I am hoping to prevent that this way.

I made a mockup in photoshop of how the tattoo is gonna be...(like this not exactly the same)

That is Tesi #1. You need to turn the last line 90 degrees.

You mean like this?

テ
シ
|

Please explain why that is?

MMM pls read my post at the top of page 2.
wich is the better way to write it?

It just has to be vertical to be read correctly. It's like the difference between < and >. same shape, different orientation, completely different meaning. or n and u for that matter.

Aaah understood.... :)

So then this is right?



hhmm but now it doesnt look that nice...
Think this is looking better vertical
テ
ッ
シ

does this also sounds like teshii?

Now it does sound like tesshii

Let me explain it to you:

You want the name Tessi, therefore we use the Japanese characters Te+s+shi+i

テ＋ッ＋シ＋－

the - means that the sound BEFORE the - is doubled. Therefore the shi becomes shii
and if you write these characters vertically like on your picture, the - has to be written in the direction you read (vertically)
if you still write it horizantally, you will write the chinese character for 1. And I guess you do not want to write tessi1, right?

I hope I explained it understandable xD

No, that sounds more like 'tesshi'.

Edit: Oh, Harumaki responded faster... xD

okay that is clear... What if i take the - away in this case the | :)
and write
テ
シ

How short wil the i be then and will it be teshi?

Harumaki, do you speak/write dutch?

If you write it that way, it'll sound like 'teshi'. the 'i' will be short. But since you pronounce Tessie with a long 'i', I think it should be written with a -, or |
But I'm not really sure if it should be written テシー　or テッシー. But that really just depends on the pronounciation...

Okay i will stick to
テ
シ
|
then......

I tried to write her name in western letters but it just doesnt seem to fit the tattoo.... I really think it needs the katakana characters.

Well bout the pronounciation actually her name is Tazzie... but i am dutch.. So if u say that name it will sound like tessie in english...

You should know you're playing with fire here. Pronunciation is the only thing that matters to transliterate to Japanese, and if the pronunciation is even slightly different than what you're saying, you're going to get something that is wrong. This is why getting a Japanese tattoo with advice from people over the Internet is objectively stupid.

Sorry about your dog, though, man.

I have to agree with this. I am less convinced now than I was at the beginning that this is the right transliteration of your dog's name in Japanese.

Unfortunately, I cannot hear you say the name to know if it is being arranged correctly in Japanese.

Yes, you need to use the "chouon mark" there but what you have is the kanji for "one", which looks slightly different. Note that the chouon mark turns and goes down in vertical text. If you prepare your text using Microsoft Word and turn it vertical, you should get that done automatically if you have used the right character. (Microsoft Word is one of the better computer applications for preparing Japanese text correctly.)
Sorry, I'm not fond of tattoos myself, especially ones in Japanese. But it's your decision. :ywave:

No, you still are using the kanji for "one" instead of the "chouon" character at the end there.

In case you're wondering how I came to notice all this stuff, I used to go to a calligraphy class, and the first thing the teacher did was to make me write "one", "two", "three". I did them each about a hundred times I think. So I got quite some idea of what the kanji for "one" looks like. I couldn't find any "ones" but here is a memento of those classes (the teacher's corrections are the orange ink):

Regardless of mistakes, your calligrapy is so much better than mine. I could never get that dern brush to go where I wanted it to. :/

Well u can :)
tessie.mp3

I tried to change it into the right mark.
Is this better?

Listening to the file and looking at this, I think it is as good as you can do.

Great glad to hear that
Thx for your time mate....