There was a reason for me putting the tribal symbol on my tail, other than it looking cool: in my religion/culture, I can't get tattoos. I wanted a symbol to embody strength and a warrior spirit, more than just my original blue tang tail design. I wanted to show little girls that they don't have to adhere to "magical princess" stereotypes, and some mermaids could be amazingly bada$$ too. As I mentioned earlier, I know next to nothing about my lineage, so I borrowed a Celtic tribal design to represent my strength. I'm sure there are other ways to do this as well, but I felt that it was something that didn't need much explanation to kids for them to get the point.

Under the same vein as the tribal tattoo and tattoos in other languages, I used to see a lot of Hebrew tattoos on people when I was a lifeguard. Most (if not all) of the people I talked to did not know the language. When I asked them what they thought their tattoo said, some were relatively close to the actual meaning of the word or phrases, but some were really, really far off.

"Oh, a tattoo in Hebrew! What does yours say?"
"G-d lives within me."
(It actually says "Jacob")