I'm one of those people...

[Whispah]

I got a tattoo 2 years ago, of a Chinese character/kanji, and am recently discovering that it may not mean what I intended when I got it. I'm looking to maybe possibly modify it, if possible, and would like some suggestions.

The original idea behind the tattoo was to mean submissive: to entrust. It was supposed to be a personal, intimate meaning to share with my lover (as it is covered most any time I'm dressed).

At any rate...this is the picture I located online, and gave to the artist:

and this is what I now have:

They are slightly different, so what I would like to know is, what each kanji means, if anything, and what options I have to modify the tattoo I already have.

Thanks everyone, for your time.

[gougou]

They are the same character, only the strength of the strokes varies a bit.

This character has lots of less intimate meanings, one of the more common ones being "to hand over".

[Whispah]

Oh, wow. Well that's not so awful, and is even kind of in line with what I thought it originally meant. Thank you!

What characters could be added for it to be more intimate and still make sense? I was told that this: 性交猫 could be used like a coined nickname (sex cat/sex kitten), and would rhyme in Chinese and Japanese, but there was a lot of debate about it.

[madizi]

Intimate meaning you say? Well, it is used in word 性交 (xing4 jiao1) which means sexual intercourse. And one of a meaning of a character itself is (according to DeFrancis' ABC Chinese-English Dictionary) 'sexual intercourse' or 'to mate'. But it also means 'mutual', 'reciprocal', 'friendship', 'relationship',.....

I don't want to teach you, but I hope that it is good lession for the next time you get tattooed. I graduated in sinology, but would think over thoroughly with which character I want to be "branded".

[HashiriKata]

Hi Whispah,

This character 交 can combine with many others to form words, but by itself as a tattoo it's fairly neutral, and has nothing to do with sex unless you mention it or add another character to it. My advice therefore is just leave it as it is. It's innocent enough and it doesn't look too bad that way. If you add something else to it, you'd have the problem of mixing styles of writing, of mismatching the inks, colours, etc. It may very well become worse, I think.

[chinlearner83]

I agree, it's neutral. Even the 'bad' one-character tattoos are all about what it means to you anyhow.

[fourfeather]

Hi Whispah,

交，it is a just one single word, it has lots of meaning in chinese, it could be used as verb, noun and adjective, and when used as adjective, it sometimes means beautyful or pretty. so just one word, no one knows what you want to express!

And the tattoo is block letter, you could chose to tattoo a chinese regular script, it has more aesthetic feeling.