Elephant Tattoos Elephant animal tattoo meanings include power and strength. It’s the sheer size that elephants have that is associated with this. However, we also know elephants as gentle and emotional animals.
Here’s the meaning behind a few of the classics:- Fully-Rigged Ships. A tattoo of a fully-rigged ship from the age of sail means the sailor had been around Cape Horn, the rough, stormy waters around the southern tip of South America.
Some people feel as though a certain animal is their “spirit animal” and speaks to them in a special way. Or, other times, people have a favorite animal that they just really like and would love to have as a tattoo. Animal tattoos can be very meaningful and create some awesome tattoos.
Sailor Jerry loved ships and held master papers on every major type of vessel. His legendary clipper ship tattoos represent both the call to adventure and the determination to be “Homeward Bound”. And they’re eminently seaworthy – Jerry always inked his riggings to be nautically accurate.
The lotus symbolizes growing and overcoming obstacles, hardship, and whatever life throws at you.
The MS 13, also sometimes seen just as MS or 13, is a symbol of the Mara Salvatrucha gang from El Salvador. Typically these tattoos can be found anywhere on the body, but are most often found in highly visible places like the face, hands or neck.
Swallow. The swallow tattoo was traditionally a symbol that a sailor had returned home safely after a successful voyage. But it can also be a symbol that someone has spent time in prison. The tattoo is supposed to mean that you have “done your bird, done your time”.
Many sailors tattoo the swallows because they believe that swallows will provide them with protection that will ensure their safety while they are on the sea. Many people who travel a lot, use their swallow tattoos to seek protection and safety while they are on the road.
Of all creatures in the animal kingdom, it is the dog that is most synonymous with loyalty. They are one of the most loyal creatures known to man and have always signified such positive traits as loyalty, faith, honesty, and companionship.
Animals that symbolize family include dogs, elephants, kangaroos, and lions. Most animals that represent family are pack animals, or have strong family ties or behaviors that humans have noticed. For example, mother kangaroos carry their joeys around for over 6 months in their pouches.
In addition to nourishing our body, the tooth tattoo can represent a nourishment of the soul. In the ways we chew and nourish our body with food, intelligence and wisdom is the food for the soul, so a tooth tattoo can also be a reminder to keep feeding the soul with goodness and wisdom.
Dice tattoos are symbols of risk taking and gambling. They’re commonly part of a larger design such as a gambling sleeve or bold Lady Luck piece. Whether they are alone or accompanied by other images dice tattoos make a great little design.
Shellback tattoos, and other significant nautical tattoos, were (and still are, on many worlds) given to sailors who crossed important navigational markers; such as date lines, equators, or latitudes like a world’s polar region.
A semicolon tattoo is, at first glance, a simple, punctuation symbol tattoo. However, there’s more to it than what meets the eye. A semicolon tattoo is actually a rather prominent design that symbolizes the survival of trauma or mental illness.
Heart with Semicolon
This is a simple but elegant tattoo that makes a statement about depression and would serve as a reminder to love yourself and keep going. Other options might be to have a small heart beside a semicolon or to make the dotted part of the semicolon a heart itself.
Ravens are also associated with melancholy, possibly owing to Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Raven’ which made it a symbol of pain and darkness.
Dogs. Dogs are a world-acclaimed symbol of friendship.
The three dots tattoo represents “Mi Vida Loca,” which translates to “my crazy life.” It often means the struggles of the underprivileged and the minorities. It’s a way of saying, “my life is crazy, but I’m thankful for it,” or “life may be crazy, but I’m still here.”
Those three little dots are called an ellipsis (plural: ellipses). The term ellipsis comes from the Greek word meaning “omission,” and that’s just what an ellipsis does—it shows that something has been left out. When you’re quoting someone, you can use an ellipsis to show that you’ve omitted some of their words.
As you can see from the image, she has a large tattoo across her upper left arm/shoulder simply depicting the number “512”. After a simple google search, I found out that number is simply her record for weightlifting, since (in her lore) she’s a world-renowned professional weightlifter.
A teardrop tattoo is a small tattoo in the shape of a teardrop near one or both eyes. It is closely associated with gang and prison culture, where it often indicates one has served time, one has been humiliated, or one has killed. Others may get such a tattoo to represent sorrow or loss.
In West Coast gang culture (USA), the tattoo may signify that the wearer has killed someone and in some of those circles, the tattoo’s meaning can change: an empty outline meaning either the wearer attempted murder or that a fellow gang member or friend died and when filled in, the wearer sought revenge.
The traditional spiderweb tattoo can symbolise a struggle in the wearer’s life that they have had to overcome. Used within a naval context, sailors would tattoo this design to show they’re wanting to go home, with the web representing their long wait.