Tattoo: The Word

By Joshua Andrews

According to scientists, the art of tattooing has been practiced by humans for at least 5000 years if not even longer . During that massive span of time, many vastly different cultures and peoples and ethnicity’s were familiar with tattoos and tattooing but what and how most of the world’s cultures used to refer to tattooing throughout history are lost to us because veritably nothing survived the test of time.

The Jewish  Torah scroll (Heb. Instruction), also known as The Five Books Of Moses, is as far as I know the oldest document in the world that specifically refers to tattoos with a specific and special word. The oldest physical Torah is found among the legendary Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written at various times between the middle of the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE. The Torah itself according to Jewish history, dates to approximately 1500 BCE, to the event at Mount Sinai known as  Matan Torah (Giving of the Torah).
“Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks upon you: I am the LORD.”
Vayikra 19:28 (Leviticus 19:28)

Here is the Hebrew for Leviticus, which is read from right to left. The Hebrew word for tattoo is I believe, the oldest known name or word for tattooing that can be verified but hopefully one of you readers can confirm this or provide a source to contradict this.

Today, the name of the profession or person who inserts the ink into someone’s skin is Tattooist, which is short for Tattoo Artist, either term is correct. The term tattooer, is not correct nor should it be used, it also just sounds kinda wrong.

The tool that is used to do tattoos with is called a tattoo machine. It is not called a tattoo gun, nor is it reffered to simply, as a gun. Guns shoot projectiles, tattoo machines create art, and if someone will ever shoot you, it will not be from any sort of model of tattoo machine that I have ever heard of.

Tattoos and Taps?

The Dutch word tap’toe was a common word or verbal command, that was used in the middle ages for lights out. It was the call for soldiers to go to sleep, patrons to leave the pubs, and taverns to close their doors. tap’toe was usually done by a bugler or drumsman playing. The word tap’toe was eventually anglicized into the word tattoo, which then came to mean the military musicians that accompanied forces into battle.

Today, any marching band is often also called a Tattoo. It was also from the Dutch word tap’toe, that the English word Taps, the US military song’s name and concept originated from. So until 1771, the word “tattoo” was the word used to refer “a military band” and the word for body art was stigmatas, or stigmas, stigma, or pict.

In 1771, Captain James Cook and the Botanist Sir Joseph Banks, returned to England from an extensive trip to the South Pacific on Cook’s ship the Endeavor. Their return was heralded as a great success at exploration and global circumnavigation and they certainly did not disappoint anyone with anything less than with fabulous, exotic chronicles about many things, including the inhabitants of these far away islands (Samoa, Polynesia) who had extensive permanent body markings called tataus. This was the first mention of body art in England for many hundreds of years, since the Norman conquest.

Until the actual invention of electric tattooing machine, tattooing was done manually by hand. It was performed by the tattooist dipping a needle or a group of needles into an ink and then poking the needle/s into the skin of the recipient of the tattoo, to create the tattoo. In those days, the tattoo artist, was not known as or called a tattoo artist, nor tattooist. Remember, tattoos were not known as tattoos.  Since the act of creating the tattoo was more similar to poking or pricking, that is exactly what they called tattooing and tattoo artists then; Pricking and Prickers.

It wasn’t too long thereafter when the word tautau became commonly pronounced, or mis-pronounced as tattoo, and that is the simple reason how and why permanent images on the skin, are known as tattoos today, but the terms pricking and Pricker, stayed until the invemtion of the electric tattooing machine. Since then, many attempts have been made to repackage the word tattooing with terms such as with derma-graphics for example, based upon the Greek word derma, meaning skin, picto-graphs is another, but all of the attempts have failed because the word, tattoo, is so entrenched in the English language lexicon.