Chinese tattoo question

[Suze]

Would you suggest just getting the character "hai" to mean ocean, or the entire word "haiyang"

Thanks,

Suze

[zhxlier]

I like hai more. Haiyang is more used to refer to the scientific ocean, like you are going to discuss oceanology. Hai is the literary "sea/ocean".

[mushroom]

Just a character/word? or in a sentence?

if just a character/word, i prefer to say "海洋" or "大海",

because if I see a Western who has just only a character tattoo "海",

maybe i think it is a typo of "嗨" (口 + 海), it means "Hello!"

if in a sentence, please give me a intact sentence.