About

About Lunar Home Studio

I'm a native Chinese speaker from mainland China. I started this site because I kept seeing Chinese tattoos that don't say what their owners think they say.

Some are machine translations, like 免费 (“free of charge”) where the person wanted 自由 (“freedom”). Some are Japanese forms sold as Chinese. Others mix simplified and traditional characters in a single word, or are mirrored by a stencil mistake. Most character packs online give you pretty shapes and no way to know if they're right.

How the meanings are checked

Every word on this site and in the design pack goes through the same steps:

1. Chosen as Chinese, not translated from English. I pick the word a Chinese speaker would actually use for the idea. Sometimes that means an idiom, like 浴火重生 for “survivor” or 顺其自然 for “let it be”, and the notes always say why.
2. Simplified ↔ traditional cross-check. Each word's traditional form was checked with the open-source OpenCC converter against three traditional standards (general, Taiwan and Hong Kong), then converted back to simplified. All 50 matched.
3. Pinyin cross-check. Pinyin was compared word by word with the pypinyin library, including characters with more than one reading (重 chóng, 相 xiāng, 宁 níng, 乐 lè, 和 hé). All 50 matched.
4. Visual check. Every design was reviewed by eye in every style, so a font's unusual variant (such as the old form 眞 instead of 真) doesn't slip through.

What you can trust, and where to be careful

A few entries are deliberate interpretations rather than one-to-one translations, for example 缘 for “destiny” or 感恩 for “grateful / blessed”. Each one has a note explaining the choice, so you can decide for yourself. Where two forms are both correct (traditional 恆 and 恒 in 永恒), I say so.

Articles here are general guidance about Chinese writing. Your tattoo is permanent. Always check the final stencil with your artist before inking, and show it to someone who reads Chinese if you can.

The design pack

If you'd like tattoo-ready files, the 50-design pack has all 50 words in simplified and traditional Chinese, four lettering styles, transparent PNG and SVG files, mirrored stencils, and a PDF guide with every meaning and its common mistake. It's sold through Gumroad, so checkout and downloads are handled there.

Contact

Questions about a word? You can reach me through my Gumroad store page.