I only have one tattoo which I got in Thailand. I love it and I suppose I would get more if I could afford to.

I should let those who are considering getting a tattoo that there is no such thing as just "one" tattoo. Once you get the ink in your skin you'll want another.

I love tattoos and have 7 and will get an 8th ass soon as I decide on the next one.

I would have to agree wholeheartedly with Taylor.... I am now the proud bearer of 18 tattoos, with plans for many more.

JesusA (imported) wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2007 8:19 pm Slammr has posted on his web site a

stencil pattern that I created of the most common word for “eunuch” in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. The word was, of course, originally Chinese, but has been borrowed as a loan word into both Japanese and Korean.

Japanese and Korean are remotely related languages. The two are more distantly related than English and Russian are, for example. The two of them together are, however, more closely related to the Indo-European languages (English, Spanish, Russian, Greek, Urdu, Persian, etc.) than either is to Chinese. They have borrowed many words from Chinese, but their basic vocabulary and grammar has nothing in common with Chinese.

The stencil has the same word repeated four times in different fonts. My personal favorite is the handwriting font in the upper right, though most of the “eunuch” tattoos that I have seen use some variation of the text font in the lower left.

The stencil can be found at ”EUNUCH” (http://www.slammerstories.net/special/T ... encils.pdf).

Eunuchs were very common in China and it is estimated that there were over 150,000 of them in the capital at the height of the Ming Dynasty. (With a total population of under 100,000,000, maybe as few as 60,000,000, which would mean that as many as one in 200 males in the entire country had been castrated!) Eunuchs came from both domestic castrations and as tribute of castrated boys from surrounding states. Annam (modern north Vietnam) and Korea were the largest foreign sources, though tribute eunuchs came from as far away as Java and eastern India (modern Bangladesh).

There was a small contingent of eunuchs in the Korean palace, based on the Chinese model, though there were never large numbers. When I was teaching at a Korean university, I met a person who claimed to be the last eunuch castrated for royal service. He was an orphan castrated in 1908, and the Yi Dynasty fell to Japanese conquest in 1910.

Japan is unique in east Asia in never having used eunuchs. The Japanese refused to castrate even domestic animals until recent times. Fields were plowed by bulls, not oxen, and war horses were stallions, not geldings. When I had my cat castrated (by a vet on a nearby army base) while I was living in rural Japan in 1968, the neighbors couldn’t understand why. It was the only castrated animal in a village with many dogs and cats and a significant industry of dairy cattle.

Jesus,

I'm not clear from your explanation what the language is of the characters used for the various eunuch stencils. Is it Japanese? I'm very interested because I'm going for one of these tomorrow night!

-todd

The writing system that was developed in China uses a great many characters, each representing unit ideas. There are over 50,000 characters in the great Morohashi dictionary of Chinese. Most, but not all, of these characters have a single pronunciation in each of the several related "Chinese" languages – Mandarin, Cantonese, Fukienese, etc. These languages are closely related. About as much so as the various Germanic languages in Europe (e.g., German, Swedish, Dutch). Most, but not all, of the characters have the same or very similar meanings in all of the Chinese languages. This means that Chinese who speak different languages can write to each other, even when they can't understand each others spoken language.

The characters were borrowed by both the Japanese and Koreans and function very much as Greek and Latin roots do in English. Each conveys a meaning, but the pronunciation can be either one borrowed from Chinese or the NATIVE word that has the same (or similar) meaning. For example, the Chinese character that means "soup" in Chinese, means "hot water" in Japanese. The combination of two Chinese characters that means "testicles" in Chinese, means "chicken eggs" in Japanese. (Leading, as you can imagine, to jokes about cross cultural misunderstandings.)

In the case of the two-character word on the tattoo stencils, there apparently was no native word in either Japanese or Korean for "eunuch" and the Chinese pronunciation (or, at least, an approximation of it) was borrowed as well as the characters.

I have my appointment for tomorrow night to get my Chinese character eunuch tattoo. This will be only my second tattoo and it will also be my second within a week. This could be the start of a trend! Actually, I anticipate that I won't be getting more tats after this one. I am, however, thinking that the 2nd tattoo may turn into the 2nd and 3rd on the same evening. Both eunuch themed but on different areas of my bod. OK, OK..no more tattoos after tomorrow!

Just got home from getting my second tattoo in a week. Yikes, at this rate I'll be covered from head to toe in no time. Tonight I got one of the Chinese character tattoos for 'eunuch' kindly provided by Jesus. The one that looks the most hand-written. Got it right over the center of my right pectoral muscle. Bottom is lined up with my nipple. OK, OK..I know, too much information!:D I departed somewhat from tradition on the coloring. The effect is mostly black, but if you look closely there's a red wash effect. I want you to know how happy I am to have a eunuch tattoo. Yes, it's relatively 'safe' in that few people will know its meaning. OTOH, I don't think I'll have any problem telling someone exactly what it means if I'm asked. I felt totally at ease letting the artist know. We even had a nice long discussion of the male to eunuch gender transition. Garrett warned me that this tat would be much more painful than last week's placed on my left shoulder blade. Not to brag or anything , but I didn't flinch and asked him if he could do better on the pain thing. I'd intended to have the exact same kanji tattoo on the side of my upper right arm. The delightful Garrett (if I disregard the fact that he somehow thought I'm 60, where in reality I'm still 55 for almost exactly the next 48 hours :-\) questioned me on my reasoning for wanting exactly the same tattoo on my arm. He's really quite a clever young lad (young, at least relative to me). I had to agree with him but I still want a tattoo on my upper right arm. So, I'll need to come up with something different. I may use a derivation of one of my photographs, as I did for the first tattoo. Unfortunately, Garrett will be out of town next Friday, so I won't be able to make it three tattoos in two weeks! I really trust Garrett and don't want to go to anyone else. I can't see going beyond three of these.

Garrett is fabulous. I too trust him completely, and won't see anyone else... Hell, I'd feel like a traitor! lol He's good peoples, and he does some pretty amazing work. I'm glad you had a positive experience there!

I may try to see Garrett again tonight for what will probably be my final tattoo. As I was enjoying sleeping in this morning, I came up with the idea of using an atomic or molecular electron orbital design. These aren't what many think of when they picture atoms and molecules. The shapes aren't circular at all, except for the first in the series which is spherical, and can be really odd. Kind of sounds like me! and I mean that only in the kindest sense The shapes really 'describe' mathematically the probability of an electron occurring in a particular space, which is the shape of the orbital. You cannot say where the electron is in this orbital or even if it's in the orbital at all. The electron might be viewed as being smeared over the volume of the orbital. This idea doesn't directly relate to eunuchs but in a way I feel it relates to who I am and how others may perceive me. I've always felt different and these orbitals are very different from what most people imagine. I've reached the great point in my life where I accept my differentness or strangeness, even, and I'm really happy with who I am. I like the image, even if I may be the only one who gets it, that I am like the electron. No one can ever be quite sure where I am. I like the smeared electron idea, too, reminds me of people who talk about gender blur.