97 Fun Facts About Tattoo History

Which ancient human remains, discovered in 1991, are known for bearing the oldest preserved tattoos?

Ötzi the Iceman: the hikers who found him took the body for a recent mountaineering casualty, but he died some 5,300 years ago, and his 61 tattoos are the oldest preserved on human skin.

The English word 'tattoo', from 'tatau', is believed to have come from which language family?

Polynesian tatau, in Samoan, Tahitian and Tongan, gave English its word; before the loanword arrived, the practice had been described in the West as painting, scarring or staining.

What is the traditional name for the distinctive style of Japanese tattooing?

Irezumi: the word literally means 'inserting ink'; because the style became tied to the yakuza, many Japanese public baths, gyms and hot springs still turn away customers with tattoos.

Who patented the first electric tattoo machine in 1891?

Samuel O'Reilly: the tattooer reworked an Edison invention so that its motor drove inked needles, and added a tube and an ink reservoir to feed them.

In pharaonic Egypt, tattooing appears to have been practised almost exclusively on which group?

Women: nearly all the tattooed mummies found there are female, among them the priestess Amunet; a Cairo doctor argued in 1898 that the dotted patterns over the abdomen were a medical treatment, not decoration.

Which European explorer's expedition introduced the word "tattoo" into English after visiting Tahiti?

Captain James Cook: his 1769 journal from Tahiti noted that 'both sexes paint their Bodys, Tattow, as it is called in their Language', and the published accounts of the voyage carried the word into English.

In Māori culture, what are the traditional facial tattoos called?

Moko: tā moko, the Māori facial tattoo, was historically carved with uhi chisels rather than punctured, leaving grooved skin; its spiral patterns recorded the wearer's genealogy and rank.

Which reality series, launched on TLC in 2005, followed tattoo artists Ami James and Chris Núñez at their shop?

Miami Ink: filmed at the pair's shop in Miami Beach, it ran until 2008 and spun off LA Ink, London Ink and NY Ink.

Which people of northern Britain did the Romans call by a name usually explained as 'painted ones'?

Picts: Picti first appears in a Roman speech of 297 AD and is usually read as 'painted ones', yet carved stones show Pictish nobles without obvious tattoos, so whether they marked their skin is still debated.

Caesar said Britons dyed themselves with 'vitrum', a Latin word that more usually means what?

Glass: vitrum is the ordinary Latin word for glass, and 'woad' is only its rarer second sense, so scholars still argue over what Caesar's Britons really put on their skin.

In traditional Austronesian tattooing tools, what were the skin-piercing points made from?

Bone, thorns or shell: the point was lashed at right angles to a handle and tapped in with a mallet, a toolkit already in use around Taiwan before 1500 BCE that travelled with Austronesian voyagers across the Pacific.

Under what nickname was Jeoly, a tattooed man William Dampier brought to London, exhibited in the 1690s?

The Painted Prince: short of money, Dampier sold his share in Jeoly on reaching London; promoters then showed him at an inn in Fleet Street until he died of smallpox in Oxford.

From 1796, American sailors' tattoos were noted on protection certificates meant to save them from what?

Royal Navy press gangs: Congress authorised the certificates to prove a seaman was American, and clerks listed tattoos, scars and birthmarks to identify him, which is why so much early sailor ink is on record.

Which circus performer is often called the first known female tattoo artist in the United States?

Maud Wagner: born Maud Stevens in Kansas in 1877, she worked as a circus aerialist and contortionist and learned tattooing from the heavily tattooed showman she married.

Which US city outlawed tattooing from 1961 until 1997?

New York: the Health Department blamed tattoo parlours for a hepatitis outbreak, so the city's tattooists went underground, working quietly from private apartments until the ban was lifted.

The earliest known figurative tattoos, about 5,000 years old, were found on mummies from which civilization?

Egypt: the dark smudges on Gebelein Man's arm had been on show in the British Museum for a century before infrared imaging in 2018 revealed a wild bull and a Barbary sheep.

In the Victorian era, tattooing gained a surprising popularity among which social class in Europe?

Aristocracy and royalty: despite the link with sailors and criminals, tattooing became a fad among Europe's upper classes in the late 19th century, with society tattooists such as Sutherland Macdonald working from London's Jermyn Street.

Which Edison invention of 1876 became the basis of the first powered tattoo machine?

The electric pen: Edison patented the battery-driven stencil-making pen in 1876; fifteen years later a tattooer realised its reciprocating needle could drive ink into skin and patented a tube-and-needle version.

The ancient Greek verb for tattooing, stizein, meant what?

To prick or sting: Greek stizein meant to prick or puncture, and its noun stigma named the resulting mark; because such marks branded slaves and criminals, 'stigma' came to mean a lasting mark of disgrace.

What do Q-switched tattoo-removal lasers do to the ink?

Shatter it: the laser pulse breaks the ink into particles small enough for the body's immune system to clear away, so a tattoo fades over several sessions spaced weeks apart.

Which Pacific island culture is known for geometric tattooing covering the whole body?

Marquesan tattooing began in a boy's teens and was added to through life, so elders could be covered all over; each person's designs were unique, recording island, family and achievements.

Which US state was the last to legalize tattooing, in 2006?

Oklahoma: its 1963 ban had not stopped tattooists, who worked illegally with no health rules, so the state Health Department, alarmed by rising hepatitis infections, backed licensing and inspecting parlours instead.

The 1769 voyage that first recorded 'tattow' sailed to Tahiti to observe what?

Transit of Venus: the Royal Society asked for the voyage so that the crossing could be timed from the Pacific, which would help astronomers work out the Earth's distance from the Sun.

Which 4th-century Roman emperor banned tattooing the faces of condemned convicts?

Constantine I: the first Christian emperor ruled that convicts sent to the mines or the arena be marked on the hands or calves instead, since the face was made in the likeness of heavenly beauty.

What is the traditional male tattoo of the Samoan Islands, applied with hand-tapped serrated combs, called?

Pe'a: the tattoo runs from waist to knees and is tapped in with a toothed comb and mallet; a man who cannot bear the pain and stops is left with an unfinished pe'a, a lifelong mark of shame.

Amunet, a tattooed mummy found at Deir el-Bahari, was a priestess of which goddess?

Hathor: early excavators dismissed the tattooed mummies of Deir el-Bahari as lowly dancers, though they lay in a royal burial ground and Amunet's coffin gives her title as priestess.

Which early American tattoo artist met his circus-aerialist wife at the 1904 World's Fair?

Gus Wagner: a sailor who learned hand-poked tattooing in the Pacific, Wagner billed himself 'the most artistically marked up man in America' and met aerialist Maud Stevens at the 1904 St. Louis fair; she later became a tattooist.

Which ancient people, known for elaborate tattoos, were excavated from the Pazyryk burials in Siberia?

Scythians: water seeped into the Pazyryk tombs and froze, so the skin of a chieftain buried there survived for more than 2,000 years with its animal tattoos still clear.

Which future tsar had a dragon tattooed on his arm while visiting Japan in 1891?

Nicholas II: his diary records seven hours under the needle aboard his ship at Nagasaki; about two weeks later a Japanese policeman slashed his head with a sabre at Otsu, leaving a permanent scar.

Which singer wore a tattooed wrist bracelet inked by San Francisco artist Lyle Tuttle?

Janis Joplin: Tuttle gave her a wristlet and a small heart on her breast, and in October 1970 he made the cover of Rolling Stone; he credited women's liberation with putting tattooing back on the map.

Herodotus wrote that tattoos were a mark of noble birth among which people?

Thracians: Herodotus says they counted tattooed skin a sign of noble birth and bare skin a sign of low birth, the reverse of the Greek view, in which a tattoo was a mark of degradation.

Why did many 17th-century travellers to the Holy Land get a Jerusalem cross tattooed?

To commemorate the pilgrimage: the cross was a permanent souvenir of reaching Jerusalem, and the custom never died out; the Razzouk family still tattoos Christian pilgrims in the Old City.

The oldest preserved tattoos, 61 marks on a Copper Age mummy, mostly take what form?

Groups of simple black lines: the marks are sets of short parallel lines, and many sit over the lower back and leg joints where his bones show wear, so researchers suspect they were a treatment for pain.

Why did Japan's new Meiji government outlaw tattooing?

Foreign opinion: the modernising government feared tattoos would look primitive to outsiders, yet foreigners kept coming to Japan to be tattooed during the ban, which was lifted after the Second World War.

Which tattooed Raiatean man was brought to England in the 1770s and presented to King George?

Omai: the young Raiatean reached England in 1774 aboard HMS Adventure, was presented to George III and sat for Joshua Reynolds, whose portrait shows off his tattooed hands.

According to Julius Caesar, the Britons painted themselves with 'vitrum', giving their skin what colour?

Dark blue: Caesar wrote that the dye gave the Britons a dark blue colour and made them more frightening to face in battle; the Latin word he used normally means something else, so what the dye was is still disputed.

Which future British king had a Jerusalem cross tattooed while touring the Holy Land in 1862?

King Edward VII: he was tattooed as Prince of Wales, and twenty years later his sons, among them the future George V, went to the same Jerusalem tattooist for the same cross.

Where did Martin Hildebrandt, the first documented professional US tattooer, learn the craft?

In the US Navy: Hildebrandt, a German immigrant, learned tattooing from a shipmate aboard the frigate USS United States in the 1840s, tattooed fellow soldiers from camp to camp in the Civil War, then opened a parlour in a tavern.

From which people are the Greeks thought to have adopted the tattooing of slaves and war captives?

Persians: Herodotus records that Xerxes had the Thebans who surrendered to him at Thermopylae marked with the royal sign, and the Greeks took up the same penal tattooing, later passing it to Rome.

The first laser used to remove tattoos, in the 1960s, was built around a crystal of which gemstone?

Ruby: laser-medicine pioneer Leon Goldman tried ruby lasers on tattoos in the 1960s; their red 694 nm light is absorbed well by black and green ink but not by every colour, so mixed tattoos need several lasers.

What is the traditional Hawaiian word for tattooing?

Kakau: the Hawaiian word also means 'to write'; in 1823 Queen Kamāmalu had her tongue tattooed to show her grief at the death of her mother-in-law, as a missionary looked on.

Herodotus says Histiaeus hid a secret message for Aristagoras on what?

A slave's shaved scalp: Herodotus (5.35) says Histiaeus tattooed a message urging revolt on a trusted slave's shaved head, waited for the hair to regrow and sent him to Aristagoras, who shaved it to read the order.

Which traditional Japanese tattooing technique is done by hand rather than with an electric machine?

Tebori: the artist pushes ink under the skin with a needle-tipped rod worked by hand instead of a machine, and a full-body design done this way can take years of sittings to finish.

Some enslaved men in the ancient Greek and Roman world bore a forehead tattoo reading what?

Stop me, I'm a runaway: this was a standard motto tattooed on slaves' foreheads, where it could not be hidden; the Greeks called such penal marks stigmata.

Which wealthy young botanist on the Endeavour voyage wrote an eyewitness account of tattooing in Tahiti?

Joseph Banks: his journal for July 1769 describes watching a girl of about twelve being tattooed with a comb of some thirty teeth, an operation he called 'a most painfull one'.

Which Indigenous people of the Arctic are known for traditional tattoos called kakiniit?

Inuit: kakiniit were stitched in by women, who drew a soot-blackened sinew thread under the skin with a needle; missionaries suppressed the practice, and Inuit women began reviving it in the 2010s.

The military 'tattoo', a drum signal, takes its name from which language?

Dutch: the military 'tattoo' comes from the 17th-century Dutch 'doe den tap toe', 'turn the tap off', the drum call telling innkeepers to stop serving so soldiers returned to barracks; it is unrelated to Polynesian tatau.

In which Christopher Nolan film does an amnesiac tattoo clues to his wife's killer on his body?

Memento follows Leonard Shelby, who relies on Polaroids, notes and tattoos, including a licence plate number, because he cannot form new memories.

Which Nazi camp complex was the only one to tattoo serial numbers onto its registered prisoners?

Auschwitz tattooed Soviet prisoners of war on the left breast and civilians on the left arm; people sent straight to the gas chambers were never numbered.

A tattoo lasts for life because the needle deposits ink in which layer of the skin?

The dermis lies below the constantly shedding epidermis, so pigment there stays put, though over decades it drifts deeper and old tattoos lose their crisp detail.

Bathhouses in one country often ban tattooed guests because of ink's link to which gangsters?

The yakuza made full-body tattoos a trademark, so many Japanese baths, gyms and hot springs still bar inked guests; some gangsters now skip tattoos for that very reason.

Mike Tyson's face-tattoo artist sued Warner Bros. for copying the design in which comedy sequel?

The Hangover Part II put the design on the character Stu; a judge let the film open but said tattoos can be copyrighted, and the studio settled weeks later.

Which actor's 'Winona Forever' tattoo became 'Wino Forever' after his split from Winona Ryder?

Johnny Depp proposed to Ryder, his co-star in a Tim Burton fantasy, in 1990, and the tattoo on his right arm was edited after they parted in 1993.

Which tattoo artist of Honolulu's Chinatown has his name on a brand of spiced rum?

Sailor Jerry, born in Reno in 1911, never saw the 92-proof rum: it was launched decades after his death with one of his hula girls on the label.

Old-time sailors tattooed a chicken on one foot and which animal on the other to ward off drowning?

A pig on the left foot and a chicken on the right were noted in 1908 as an older seamen's charm; crosses on the feet were meant to keep sharks away.

Which Disney film gave the demigod Maui living tattoos that were animated by hand?

Moana's animator Eric Goldberg drew Maui's tattoos by hand; early tests tried drawing the whole film that way, but in the final cut only the tattoos are hand-drawn.

Which punctuation mark became a popular tattoo after a 2013 project tied it to suicide prevention?

The semicolon marks where a writer could have ended a sentence but chose to go on; Amy Bleuel founded the project in tribute to her father.

In which TV drama does engineer Michael Scofield carry secret blueprints in a tattoo covering his upper body?

Prison Break's tattoo took about five hours to apply to actor Wentworth Miller, so for T-shirt scenes the crew put on only the forearm sections.

Which Herman Melville novel features Queequeg, a harpooner whose face and body are covered in tattoos?

Moby-Dick gives Queequeg square, geometric tattoos, and one scholar argues Melville modelled him on the Māori chief Te Pēhi Kupe.

Which hacker is the title character of Stieg Larsson's novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

Lisbeth Salander first appeared in the 2005 novel as an antisocial hacker with a photographic memory, working online under the name Wasp.

Which Hollywood star helped popularise Thai sak yant tattoos with a Bengal tiger inked by Ajahn Noo Ganpai?

Angelina Jolie flew to Thailand for the tiger in 2004; it covers her lower back, and the tattooist chanted a blessing over the design.

Which Baywatch star had barbed wire tattooed on her arm for the film Barb Wire instead of daily make-up?

Pamela Anderson's 1996 film reworked the plot of Casablanca in a future American civil war, and she later began having the armband removed.

Which Simpsons character gets a 'Mother' tattoo whose removal eats up the family's Christmas money?

Bart sneaks off for the tattoo in the first half-hour episode, and once Marge spends the holiday fund on removing it, Homer moonlights as a mall Santa.

Which Miami Ink alumna ran High Voltage Tattoo in Hollywood on her own TLC series, LA Ink?

Kat Von D once tattooed 400 people in 24 hours on the series, which Guinness World Records recognised as a record at the time.

Which illustrator's 1944 Saturday Evening Post cover shows a tattooist adding a name under crossed-out ones?

Norman Rockwell borrowed a real tattoo machine as a reference, and the seaman in his painting already wears a row of struck-through sweethearts.

Mehndi, the temporary skin decoration applied at South Asian weddings, uses a paste made from which plant?

Henna leaves give a reddish-brown dye, and in the West the wedding designs are often simply called henna tattoos.

Which small tattoo, among the most widely recognised prison symbols, can mean time served or a killing?

The teardrop, inked beneath the eye, can mean time served or a killing; in some West Coast gang circles an empty outline means only an attempt.

What do tattooists call the ready-made designs displayed on shop walls for walk-in customers?

Flash is said to have got its name at carnivals, where tattooists hung eye-catching designs in front of their booths to pull in passers-by.

Which book of the Hebrew Bible contains the verse that many Jews and Christians read as a ban on tattoos?

Leviticus 19:28 bans marks on the body alongside gashes for the dead, and one reading limits it to an ancient rite of rubbing the ashes of the dead into wounds.

Which English word for a lasting mark of shame comes from the ancient Greek noun for a tattoo?

Stigma reached English around 1600 meaning a mark burned into the skin; the sense of public disgrace followed in the 1610s, and its plural, stigmata, names Christ-like wounds.

Small permanent tattoos are used as alignment markers to help aim which cancer treatment?

Radiotherapy markers are usually inked for good, though tattoos that show only under ultraviolet light have been tested to spare patients a lasting reminder.

Whang-od, who appeared on a Vogue cover aged 106, made her name hand-tapping tattoos in which country?

The Philippines' Kalinga people call the art batok, and Whang-od, from the mountain village of Buscalan, is often described as the last of its old-style masters.

Seafarers traditionally earn a shellback or King Neptune tattoo after a ceremony for first crossing what?

The equator earns a shellback or King Neptune, while a golden dragon marks a first crossing of the International Date Line.

Which showman toured the fully tattooed 'Captain' George Costentenus with his American circus in the 1870s?

P. T. Barnum reportedly paid him $100 a day; Costentenus claimed he had been kidnapped in Asia and tattooed against his will, and posters counted some 388 figures on his skin.

After the 1789 mutiny on the Bounty, which officer listed the tattoos of 21 mutineers to help catch them?

William Bligh described the fugitives in letters, noting hearts, dates and initials inked in the European style beside designs picked up in Tahiti.

Which tattoo style is known for bold black outlines, a limited colour palette and motifs borrowed from sailors?

American traditional, also called old school, drew many motifs from wartime servicemen's tattoos, and the 'new school' style it influenced widened the range of colours and subjects.

Which tattooing method swaps the machine for a single needle, often a sewing needle dipped in pen ink?

Stick and poke was a common method before tattoo machines arrived in the nineteenth century, and professionals still practise it with medical-grade needles.

Which Ray Bradbury book frames its stories with a carnival drifter whose tattoos come alive to tell each tale?

The Illustrated Man says his tattoos were the work of a time-travelling woman, and Rod Steiger was covered in mock ink to play him in the 1969 film.

Which colour of tattoo ink triggers allergic reactions most often, partly because of the mercury in some pigments?

Red dyes can also contain azo chemicals, which like mercury are more likely than other pigments to provoke the skin.

Biomechanical tattoos took off when artists began copying which designer's creature work for the 1979 film Alien?

H. R. Giger's Necronomicon paintings went straight onto skin before tattooists such as Guy Aitchison and Aaron Cain began drawing original designs in the style.

Which fish, a Japanese symbol of luck and perseverance, is a classic motif in traditional Japanese tattooing?

Koi carp share the tattooist's repertoire with tigers, snakes and dragons, and breeders even named one variety Kumonryu, meaning nine tattooed dragons.

Which two words did seamen tattoo across their knuckles to keep from falling out of the rigging?

Hold Fast was described in 1911 as worn by English sailormen since the words were coined, and the 2003 film Master and Commander gave an old crewman the same knuckles.

Horace Ridler, the sideshow star billed as The Great Omi, was tattooed all over to resemble which animal?

A zebra pattern took London tattooist George Burchett more than 150 hours, and its broad curved stripes also hid the tattoos Ridler already had.

In Russian prison tattooing, which symbol on the knees or shoulders signals authority and a refusal to bow?

Stars with eight points denote the rank of a 'thief in law', and worn on the knees they announce that the wearer kneels to no one.

Which American tattooist studied in Japan with the master Horihide before licensing his art to a 2000s clothing line?

Don Ed Hardy began working with Horihide in 1973 and became the main force in bringing Japanese aesthetics and techniques into American tattooing.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi's 1820s prints of heroes from which Chinese novel set off a craze for full-body tattoos in Japan?

Water Margin, known in Japan as Suikoden, has 108 heroes, and the prints inspired multicoloured pictorial tattoos running from the neck to the mid-thigh.

Olive Oatman drew crowds in 1860s America with a chin tattoo given to her by which Native American people?

The Mohave took Oatman in after she was traded to them as a captive, and she spent four years with them; she is the first known white woman with Native American tattoos.

Which twentieth-century Scandinavian king, a trained seaman, had dragons and birds tattooed while at sea?

Frederik IX of Denmark picked up his dragons on travels in Asia around 1930, while he was serving as an officer in the Danish fleet.

Which tenth-century Arab traveller described the Rus traders he met as tattooed in green from toe to neck?

Ibn Fadlan left Baghdad in 921 as secretary to a caliph's embassy, and his journal is best known for its eyewitness description of the Volga Vikings.

A Hindu sect founded in Chhattisgarh by a man barred from a temple tattoos which deity's name on the body?

Rama's name is said to have gone first onto the founder's own forehead in the 1890s, in defiance after he was refused entry to a temple because of his caste.

Which indigenous people tattooed girls' mouths, enlarging the design until they were ready to marry?

Ainu girls usually began the tattoo between ten and thirteen, and during Japan's colonisation of Hokkaido the Ainu were ordered to give the custom up.

Members of which Christian community commonly have a small cross tattooed on the inside of the right arm?

Copts also wear designs built from three strokes and three dots, a pattern that stands for the Trinity.

Tattoo pigment stays in place because it is trapped inside successive generations of which immune cells?

Macrophages engulf the ink as foreign matter soon after the needle goes in, and the pigment ends up concentrated in a band just under the skin's outer layer.

In one region of Edo-period Japan, convicts were punished with a forehead tattoo of the character for which animal?

Dog was only one such brand: other regions used crosses, circles and similar plain signs on the face and arms, sometimes coded to show where the crime took place.

Chinese legend says the mother of which Song dynasty general tattooed a vow of loyalty down his back?

Yue Fei is said to have received the four characters, a pledge to repay the country with pure loyalty, before he left home to join the army.

Which rock guitarist hosted the tattoo contest Ink Master with judges Chris Núñez and Oliver Peck?

Dave Navarro later handed the hosting job to Joel Madden and came back as the programme's 'Master of Chaos', adding twists to each episode.

Before lasers, one tattoo-removal method involved scrubbing the skin with which household substance?

Salt scrubbing, known as salabrasion, sat alongside dermabrasion, acid peels and cutting the tattoo out, and it carried an extremely high risk of scarring and leftover ink.