Chinese Tattoo Designs

Fredy Guarín is a great football player, representing Colombia at the World Cup. Fredy Guarín has a Chinese calligraphy tattoo on his right inner arm. It reads, 丹尼宗, which doesn't make much sense. In Chinese, 丹 is prounced "dan" and refers to a pellet. It's a common character in Chinese names. The character 尼 (ni) is phonetic and is the first part of the word for "nun" in Chinese, which is "ni gu" (尼姑). Finally, there is 宗, which can be the surname "Zong." So, as Kotaku's Beijing-based reporter Eric Jou points out, the tattoo could basically be read phonetically as "Danny Zong." Fredy Guarín. Danny Zong. Whichever!

 

According to Chinese soccer site Ballpo.com, the phonetic way to write his name in Chinese is 弗雷迪-瓜林 or "Fei lei de - Gu Lin." So Danny Zong is close. Eh, not really. It's unclear what this tattoo means and whether or not it's actually supposed to be his name. Maybe it's a friend's name. Or a stranger's name. Who knows. 

In Japanese, the characters are equally perplexing. The character 丹 (ni) can refer to "red earth" or "vermillion," while 尼 (ama) refers to a nun just as it does in Chinese. Finally, the character宗 (shuu) refers to a "sect," as in a Buddhist sect. The character can also mean "doctrine" or "root." As Mixi News points out, the meaning is completely ambiguous to Japanese people. Hopefully Guarín knows what it means, or at least, what he thinks it means.

As noted recently on Naver, there are other soccer players who currently are not in the world cup, but have interesting tattoos. They are in the World Cup of strange tattoos. 

Here is Argentine player Diego Galván, which the Japanese hiragana characters あな (Ana) on his chest. That's probably the name of a loved one, but since it's written in hiragana, あな (Ana) looks like it could mean "hole" or refer to a vacancy or someone missing. The characters look incredibly odd juxtaposed with the baby tattoo on the other chest. If he wanted to write the foreign name "Ana," then アナ (Ana), written in katakana would be correct. However, that also refers to "announcers," so that might baffle just as much. How about "Ana" in Roman letters?