Tattoo Terminology

What better place to start than with a list of common tattoo terms.  I have purposely omitted from the list most tattoo styles…mainly because of the sheer number of them.  I will cover popular tattoo styles and designs in a future post.

So…here we go!

After Care: How you take care of your tattoo once you get home. People don’t realize that they play a huge part in the quality of the tattoo by how well they take care of it.

Atypical Tattoos: Tattoos outside of the mainstream; for example, in the tongue, palms of the hands, genitals and inner lips.

Blacklight: Tattoos that show up only under UV light. Many tattoo artists refuse to work with UV ink, because of the potential medical complications and the difficulty involved in the application process.

Blackwork: A tattoo done only in shades of black and grey.

Blow-out: If a tattoo artist goes too deep when tattooing, the ink can spread by capillary action, causing a blurry halo around the main lines. Some body parts; such as the shaft of the penis; are especially vulnerable to tattoo blow-out.

Bodysuit: Complete coverage of the body with tattoos, usually a bodysuit is work that covers everything but the neck up, the wrists to the hands, and the feet, although this definition can vary.

Cover Up: A tattoo that is covering a pre-existing tattoo. A complicated process. Better to be sure of your tattoos before you get them!

Epidermis: Top layer of the skin. A tattoo needs to go a few layers into the epidermis, but not all the way through.

Fine Line: Smaller needle configurations allow for thinner outlines, more precise shading and extremely detailed designs. Fine line tattoos are complex, with delicate coloring, intricate patterns and subtle highlights and undertones.

Geishin: The term used for penal tattoos in Japan from the 17th century until the abolishment of geishin in 1870.

Horimono: Horimono is the traditional Japanese term for Japanese style full-body tattoos. It is not as widely used nowadays as the word Irezumi, even though it is in fact older, and a lot more respectful.

Ink: Pigments deposited into the epidermis by the tattoo needle.

Ipa Olim: A traditional Borneo tattoo design.

Irezumi: Irezumi means traditional, hand-tattooed full-body tattoos in the Japanese style. Even though irezumi is now most widely known and used in Japan when talking about tattoos, it is originally a rather disrespectful, negative term for tattoo.

Jailhouse: Style of tattoo inspired by tattoos inmates would be able to get in jail. Were very crude due to materials (urine and soot for ink). Now refers to both style (Black and Gray only) and subject matter.

Jomon: The earliest period known of traditional Japanese tattooing.(10,000 B. C. ~ 300 B. C.). The people on the Japanese islands during the Jomon ear may be the distant ancestors of the Ainu.

Lettering: A style of tattooing in which words are used instead of graphic images.

Kirituhi: The Maori name given to Maori-inspired tattoos that feature Maori motifs but lack any real cultural meaning.

Moku: A moko is the facial tattoo of the Maori people of New Zealand.

New School: Bright, colorful, vivid style of modern tattooing, often cartoonish.

Occlusive Method: The occlusive method of healing tattoos involves using an occlusive bandage during the initial healing stage. The bandage acts as a scab, meaning that your body doesn’t have to create one, which leads to less scarring.

Old School Tattoo: Old School tattooing is characterized by bold outlines, heavy black shading, limited primary colours and "standard" designs like black panthers, hearts, daggers, pin-up girls and roses.

Permanent Cosmetics: Tattoos that enhance lips (liner or lipstick), eyebrows, eyes (mascara or shadow), and even moles.

Realism: A style of tattooing in which realistic images, often portraits, are tattooed on the skin.

Sailor (also known as Traditional, Americana, or Sailor Jerry): Style of tattoos gotten by sailors from the turn of the century to the 1950s. Gotten in ports like Amsterdam, San Francisco, and Coney Island. Refers to both the style of drawing and subject matter (pinups, anchors, bluebirds, pirate ships)

Scratcher: Also known as a Butcher or Hacker. A low quality tattoo artist that has usually taught themselves, and as a result, creates extremely poor, jailhouse-quality tattoos. Working out of their homes, they are unlikely to sterilise their equipment properly and have little to no knowledge of cross-contamination prevention.

Shader: Also known as Magnum. A group of needles used for shading and filling in a tattoo. They generally consist of two rows of needle sharps spaced intermittently in a flat shape, although can contain up to 9 needles. They are used for filling in colour, blending and shading a tattoo after the outline has been completed.

Single-needle: Single needle describes a practice in tattooing of using one needle. Single needle tattoo is a Jailhouse tattoo trademark. This is mainly due to the inablity of prisioners to obtain needles.

Sleeve: This means that the entire arm, or leg, is tattooed, generally with a coherent single piece (rather than just a bunch of patches).

Stencil: The outline of the tattoo design, treated and transferred to skin with alcohol, that acts as a guide for the tattoo artist while working.

Tattoo: An indelible mark or figure fixed upon the body by insertion of pigment under the skin. The name originates from the sound the sticks and needle would make during tattooing with traditional materials, "ta-tu ta-tu ta-tu"

Tebori is the Japanese word for traditional hand tattooing Japanese style. (This excludes other hand-tool tattooing methods, like in Borneo or Samoa, e.g.) Tebori is a unique technique, which the tattoo master can execute without assistance. He stretches the skin with one hand, with the other he puts in the ink.

Traditional: This style came to the western world in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Distinguished by clean and simple designs, thick, black outlines are filled with solid blocks of color, and they offer little detail. This style is the most visually striking, and, according to experts, the one that ages the best.

Tramp Stamp: A derogatory term for lower back tattoos on women. The term originally applied to lower quality, often flash based designs…but can also be used to refer to all lower back tattoos that ride on the pant-line.

Tribal: Heavy black graphic designs inspired by the traditional Polynesian tattooing of Tahiti, Hawaii, and New Zealand.