The tattoo reads in Hebrew as "Gamad", which translates to Gnome.
Why did he do it? No idea! Most likely it's a misspelling, though there's always the possibility that this is a die-hard role-playing geek, taking his character one step too far. The photo shoot setting certainly fits!
A better translation of "Gamad" is dwarf, I think. Gnome is usually translated "Nanas".
ReplyDeleteDwarf, gnome, midget, little person... you name it, this tattoo means it.
ReplyDeleteI love your blog. I just thought you should know.
ReplyDeleteI saw a Hebrew tattoo for the first time today. I was kind of shocked because tattoos are forbidden by the halakha so I thought it was a weird thing for someone to do and they must be particularly clueless. Then I come here and see that they're common apparently. The one I saw today was at least correctly spelled and sensible "het yod". This is in Canberra, Australia.
ReplyDeleteI am Jewish and have hebrew tattoos that I can read and are special to me. It is part of my identity and are holy to me. I am not Orthodox and don't follow halakhah and they are an important expression of my Judaism and my values .Yes many people might get them coz they think they look cool and can't read them but that is their problem: there are also lots of good ones and there are several sites that show them like "Jews with tattoos" Check it out. This site is for the bad ones by stupid people but many are not like that
DeleteMy guess is that his name is "Damon" and that he intended to spell out dalet-mem-nun, but conflated the nun with the gimel and spelled it backwards.
ReplyDeleteLikely he wanted to tattoo "Namer", i.e "Tiger".
ReplyDelete"Resh" looks a bit like "Dalet" and "Nun" looks a bit like "Gimel".
Namer -> Gamad.
Or... he's a die-hard Linux user who's equally so about the GNOME desktop environment -- he might even be a GNOME Project developer -- and is most likely an American Jew. How do I know? Because if he was an Israeli, he wouldn't see any humor in "translating" GNOME from English into Hebrew; but an American Jew (who knows little about Judaism, and even less Hebrew) would think it very kewl to translate GNOME into Hebrew, and then get it inked on his arm.
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