Thursday, June 1, 2017

from: Teresa B.
to: ""
date: Sun, May 28, 2017 at 2:16 PM
subject: What is this!?

Please could you tell me what this means? It's my friends tattoo of her name (gemma) on her arm but she is now not sure if it really does say that?? 


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  2. This makes me wonder and think that maybe there's a better way.

    The name Gemma (along with many other names of western and biblical origin) won't have an exact version of them in Chinese, and would only be written in Katakana in Japanese (even then some of them would morph the pronunciation and probably be tricky indeed).

    It makes me think a better idea would be finding out what your name actually means and than using characters that convey the same idea, or at least a very similar idea.

    For example my name is Timothy, it means "honouring God". If I wanted it in Japanese, I know I should use 神 for God, and I should find out what Kanji, or Kanji combination as literally as possible translates to "honour" or "glory", and than get the grammar right so my tattoo would roughly translate to "Honouring God" or "Glorifying God".

    What do you think? Do you agree, do you disagree. I'm curious about your thoughts. I'm only a beginner at Japanese, it seems like your really know your hanzi/kanji.