A chesty lettering problem
Comments: 25
What do you think this tattoo says across the chest of the person* in this photograph Lil took? (Scroll down for Lil’s comment.)
It’s driving us nuts.
Here’s a close-up, for the, er, typographically interested.
(And please do excuse incoherent sentences: I’m absolutely exhausted. For different reasons, I might add.)
* tranny
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Posted to Oh, the Humanity • 2005.03.17 (Thu) • 23:10
Comments
Posted by Arikawa 2005.03.17, 23:36
FDEIG, an acronym for something, I guess.
Posted by Stephen 2005.03.17, 23:59
A few minutes ago, someone commented “FAITH” on the Flickr page, a guess which is both coherent (no offense, Arikawa) and completely believable. I’m voting for “FAITH.” If you want some word tattooed, this is probably the way to go; when/if you get sick of what it says, you could always tell people it means something else. No one would ever know…
Posted by Dave2 2005.03.18, 00:10
It looks like “faith” to me… in some kind of Fraktur variant.
Posted by Yoshi 2005.03.18, 01:03
Crearly “FAITH”. I’m used to typographic fun in my work ;)
Posted by Narayan 2005.03.18, 01:07
Another vote for “faith”, though it could be the insignia for “Fdcjb”, a famous calligraphy school in some country desperately in need of vowels.
Posted by Eduardo 2005.03.18, 02:43
Why do you think is an english word?
Posted by Mary Beth 2005.03.18, 12:56
Looked like the word SMILE to me at first, written in not very nice gothic black text. I read some of the other comments and can see where people would think it’s FAITH except that that makes the use of the gothic letters even worse. The first letter is really really really an S, no matter how much you’d like it to be F.
I studied this stuff while being a calligrapher. It’s all sort of mushy and pretty bad. Looks “good” but probably looked better while it was being done under the influence of something.
If I really had to put money down, I’d go with FAITH and say that someone who “knew calligraphy” did it out for someone who liked it or the person doing the tatoo said they knew how to do it. See? Looks like gothic, must be gothic.
Posted by Evan Jones 2005.03.18, 18:44
I’m with Mary Beth. It’s not so much what it says, as what they thought it said. They were undoubtedly guessing about the letters. Therefore, probably FAITH.
Posted by drgoumet 2005.03.18, 21:51
I think It says “Satie”
According to dictionary.com, satie is:
“French composer who rebelled against romanticism with his unorthodox and often whimsical compositions, such as Socrate (1918).”
It just seems to have a few jumbled links in the typography, especially with the (presumably….) ‘e’.
I thought of this through the Endorphin album.
That is officially my 2c.
Posted by drgoumet 2005.03.18, 21:55
I thought I should add….I am drunk at the moment though…a night out at the Kareoke (a Japanese invention you know…)
Did I spell that right though????
Posted by Matthew Buchanan 2005.03.19, 14:34
I think it looks like SUZIE personally.
Posted by tokyogoat 2005.03.21, 21:02
mentioned on lil”s pic that I think it is “SHITE”
Posted by AQ 2005.03.22, 02:06
I’d go with Suzie. Faith is more likely a word to have inked on the chest, but it looks a lot more like Suzie to me.
Posted by woodrow 2005.03.25, 07:18
The real problem here is that the person doing the lettering didn’t understand the structural logic of Blackletter and has just bodged it together by rearranging parts of letters. Perhaps there wasn’t an entire typeface for them to sample from.
So that’s why it’s illegible: because a few of those letters don’t really exist!
Posted by xarius 2005.03.26, 12:35
It says “Shite”
it’s a briticism of “Shit” i.e.
“that’s shit” could be that’s “shite”
pronounced Shyte
Posted by Kristen 2005.03.27, 01:50
For the record, I think it says JULIE.
Posted by Cin 2005.03.30, 02:37
On first viewing, it looks like a very ornate “Faith” to me…
I’m trying to remember what this font is called - there’s quite the abundance of tattoos in Vancouver that incorporate it….
Posted by indieb0i 2005.03.31, 04:13
I was really sure it was “SHITE” when I first looked at it. However, after comparing the letters to other gothic fonts I am almost positive of what the 2nd, 4th, and 5th letters are: U, I, and E. That leaves us with -U-IE. The first letter matches an S most closely. I’d have a hard time beliving it’s an F because then it would be a lowercase letter, while the rest are all uppercase. That leaves me somewhere between 80 and 90% sure that we have SU-IE. Unfortunately, the closest match I could find for the middle letter was L.
Ugh, that means it says “SULIE.” Don’t know what it could mean, and I don’t know of any names that are close to that.
Posted by lysdexia 2005.04.01, 06:32
Posted by Scott 2005.04.02, 15:16
The first letter is obviously an S, so it is most definitely not FAITH. I agree that the second letter does appear to be an A. The third in my eyes, is a T. The fourth is an I. And the last letter is obviously an E. It cannot be a lowercase H, because the rest of the tattoo is in caps. Obviously, the whole tattoo must be in caps, making my guess SATIE. I don’t lknow why. Ask the tranny.
Posted by Joe Bloom 2005.04.06, 03:11
Most probably FAITH, as by my guess this is some sort of gathering of hippies of some sort.
Who else paints themselves naked? Apart from porn stars, and artists (perverts, in my opinion).
Whatever it says, that ‘woman’, scares me.
Posted by ryan 2005.04.14, 13:04
I think anyone seeing “FAITH” may have a little too much.
;)
go to the “create sample” section here: http://www.linotype.com/89949/mariage-font.html
SULIE is the closest character to character match I can get.
Posted by ryan 2005.04.14, 13:05
Oh and to Joe Bloom: It’s a Mardi Gras in Sydney. A Gay Pride parade.
Posted by lysdexia 2005.04.22, 11:57
Stop it, everyone, I already disproved you.
Posted by sulie 2005.11.20, 22:34
well guys i know this was a long time ago, but i did a search on mine name (too much time on my hands). The tattoo is actually on my ex, so it is true that it is Sulie.
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