Ariana Grande is not tattoo shy, so it’s not super surprising that she got some ink to celebrate the Billboard success of her latest single, ‘7 Rings’. But what was a little surprising was that fans pointed out the tattoo is essentially misspelled.
To recap, Ariana decided to get the title of her track etched on her palm with the characters “七輪.” She posted (and then deleted) a picture of the hand tattoo on her Instagram, captioned,
“This felt super good @kanenavasard jk (everyone thinks this is a fake hand but it’s indeed… my hand.”
In Chinese, those characters roughly translate to ‘7 rounds’ or ‘7 wheels’, but fans promptly pointed out that the Japanese Kanji translation is ‘shichirin’, which means Japanese style barbecue grill.
Ariana Grande’s new tattoo “七輪” means Japanese style bbq grill, not 7 rings. ? If you want to know about 七輪, just google “SHICHIRIN” pic.twitter.com/HuQM2EwI62
— *amo* (@hey__amo) January 30, 2019
The mistranslation attracted some criticism directed at Ariana for using the Asian language as mere ‘aesthetic’.
if she wanted 7 rings as in like, rings u wear on ur finger isn’t it literally リング… i guess it’s not as aesthetic as kanji though :/
— melon? (@himespetchi) January 30, 2019
her tattoo is correct when looked at in traditional chinese it does mean 7 rings i just think this choice wasnt a good one in any way at all honestly it’s…?
— єℓιѕα ? (@jjongosaur) January 30, 2019
But Ariana doesn’t especially phased by the ‘mistake’. In a now-deleted tweet Ariana responded to the critics, insisting that because of where its placed it was too painful to complete.
“Indeed, I left out (the other symbol) which should have gone in between,” she wrote. “It hurt like f**k n still looks tight. I wouldn’t have lasted one more symbol lmao (laugh my a*s off). But this spot also peels a ton and won’t last so if I miss it enough I’ll suffer thru the whole thing next time.”
“Also… huge fan of tiny bbq grills.” She added.
She later deleted the initial tattoo picture and her tweet responding to the misspelling. But like she said, this tattoo will peel away, so if she wants to actually get ‘7 Rings’ or Japanese BBQ grill, again, then she can make that choice next time.