Friday, January 14, 2011

from: Morgan D.
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 2:51 PM
subject: Help with tatoo translation

Hello!

I was reading your blog- I love it! My father got this tattoo and he wont tell anyone what it means. Its been rumored to mean "man with many blessings" or "man with a big stick." Can you tell me what it really means?

Thank you so much!!!

-M



The characters &mean "eternal" and "rock/stone". Of course, the tattooed phrase is non-sense. However, it is very likely the person got this wanted to "rock forever" if he was into the music scene, or "[to be] stone forever" as a junkie. As many modern day rockstars are both.

永石 could also be Japanese names for えいせき (Eiseki), ながいし (Nagaishi), or よんそく (Yonsoku).

6 comments:

  1. Judging by the email, perhaps it was intended to mean "forever hard" as in "I'll never take 2 viagras at once ever again".

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  2. The word "rock" is metaphorically associated with durability, stability and stubornness. Perhaps the tattoo was meant to mean sometthing like thaat.

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  3. My interpretation: "always a blockhead"

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  4. If 永石 is a Japanese surname, the most likely reading is Nagaishi. Eiseki is possible as a company name or something. I have no idea where the heck "Yonsoku" came from; that seems very unlikely.

    Interestingly, 永石 is also a place name read なげし (Nageshi), most notably as the name of a hot springs (温泉) in Beppu.

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  5. Eternal Rock sounds like some Christian thing to me. Jesus is my eternal rock or something along those lines is probably what he was going for, no?

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  6. I could see it intending to mean "eternal stone" as something durable, as stone is - "like a rock" as in "constant and reliable" or something, but yeah, kinda gets mangled in translation doesn't it...if that was the intent at all.

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