“Yes, I spelt the tattoo wrong. Yes, I repeat, it’s spelt wrong.”
Tattoos are forever, so getting inked is not a decision to be made lightly — or one that should be made without at least running a spell check first!
Unfortunately, tattoo mishaps are all too common. Countless people don’t totally think things through and end up with tattoos that are not quite what they envisioned. From misspelled words to mistranslated phrases, these unintentional errors end up becoming permanent blunders.
Several celebrities have come forward about their botched tattoos too — and hope that they can serve as a cautionary tale.
Read on to see these stars’ bad tattoos…
Ariana Grande
When Ariana Grande released her song “7 Rings,” she wanted to commemorate it with a tattoo. She ended up getting the song title translated into Japanese and then got the kanji characters 七輪 tattooed on her palm. The only issue was that when the characters were put together, it actually translated to “shichirin,” which means small barbecue grill.
Ariana ended up going back to the tattoo artist to restructure her ink and at the advice of her Japanese tutor, she added a few more characters. With the update, the tattoo now roughly translates to “ring seven fingers,” if read vertically from top to bottom and horizontally from right to left.
“Slightly better. Thanks to my tutor for helping me fix and to @kanenavasard for being a legend. And to my doctor for the lidocaine shots (no joke). RIP tiny charcoal grill. Miss u man. Actually really liked u,” Ariana later wrote on Instagram.
Harry Styles
Shamrock Social Club
When Harry Styles was still a teen, he got lyrics from The Temper Trap’s song “Sweet Disposition” tatted on his arm — but it turns out he got the words wrong. While Harry got inked with the phrase “won’t stop till we surrender,” the lyrics actually are “won’t stop to surrender.”
When Harry’s then-girlfriend Taylor Swift ended up running into the band backstage at the ARIA Awards, she got them to hand write the lyrics but frontman Dougy Mandagi says he debated how to write them.
“She goes ‘Ahh it’s my boyfriend’s birthday soon I wanna give him a present — here’s a piece of paper, can you please write down the lyrics to ‘Sweet Disposition,’ sign it, I wanna give it to him,” Dougy explained to Pedestrian TV.
He continued, “So I had this dilemma in my mind at that point — Do I write the wrong lyrics? Do I write the right lyrics? I kept it real, I wrote the right lyrics man.”
Harry has since removed the tattoo.
Orlando Bloom
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In 2020, Orlando Bloom decided to get inked with his son Flynn’s name and birthday in morse code on his arm. When he later shared the tat, fans pointed out that the morse code read “Frynn” instead of Flynn. Luckily, Orlando was able to go back and get it fixed so it was correct.
“finally dot it right! How do you make a mistake like that? #pinterestfail (read the small print) 😂,” Orlando’s wrote on Instagram.
Jennifer Lawrence
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Jennifer Lawrence made a mistake when she got a last minute tattoo with Liam Hemsworth and his family. Looking back, she says she decided to get the chemical symbol for water — H2O. Unfortunately, she didn’t realize that when it’s written out, the “2” should sit lower than the letters. And while a mistake was made, the tattoo was done in the color of a scar so it’s hardly noticeable.
“I was with Liam’s family, and everybody was getting tattoos. I was like, ‘Well, I’m always going to need to be hydrated, so I guess I should just get ‘H2O’ on my hand.’…By the way I know that the ‘2’ is high and ‘H2O’ the ‘2’ is supposed to be low. I should’ve Googled it before I got it tattooed on my body forever,” she told HitFix.
Jessie J
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Jessie J has a misspelled tattoo — and it’s actually lyrics to one of her own songs! When she was still a teenager, she got the lyrics to “Who You Are” inked on her hip but instead of saying “don’t lose who you are” it says “loose.” Jessie is fully aware of the mistake and says she tries to keep the tattoo covered up at all times.
“Yes my tattoo says… ‘don’t loose who you are in the blur of the stars.’ Yes they are MY lyrics from my song ‘Who You Are.’ Yes that I wrote. Yes, I spelt the tattoo wrong. Yes, I repeat, it’s spelt wrong. Yes, I got it done in Essex. Yes, the tattoo artist didn’t mention it. Yes, I was 18. Yes, I still don’t know the difference between ‘lose’ and ‘loose.’ Yes, it’s the reason I wear everything high waisted,” Jessie wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post.
Ed Sheeran
TikTok
Ed Sheeran also misspelled some of his song lyrics in one of his tattoos but it was actually all planned out. In his music video for “Galway Girl,” which starred Saoirse Ronan, she accompanied Ed while he was getting inked with the song’s title in her handwriting. Unfortunately, it ended up saying “Galway Grill” instead of “girl.” Ed called out Saoirse a few days later, saying it was her fault — but they had actually chosen to misspell it.
“It’s not a mistake. Ed got up on stage two days after we did it and said that I had made the mistake, and it makes me look illiterate. I’m just here to say that it was all planned,” Saoirse said on The Late Late Show. “We thought it would be funny and edgy if we misspelled girl and made it grill instead.”
Cara Delevingne
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In 2023, Cara Delevingne got the Italian word “Dormiveglia” tattooed on her forearm, which means “half-asleep.” She added the definition of the word in English, which should read “the place that stretches between sleeping and waking.” Unfortunately, the tattoo artist wrote “walking” instead of “waking.” After fans noticed the mistake, Cara’s tattoo artist Matteo Nangeroni commented that the typo was “maybe” intentional.
Cara has since gotten another tattoo that overlaps with the misspelling, making it not quite as obvious.
Hayden Panettiere
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Hayden Panettiere has a large tattoo on her back that features the Italian phrase “vivere senza rimpianti” which translates to mean “Live without regrets.” Unfortunately, “rimpianti” was misspelled as “rimipianti” — but Hayden says she doesn’t harp on the mistake. In fact, she says it’s what the tattoo is all about.
“When I was younger, I was upset, and my dad said he wanted to show me something. He slammed one door of the bathroom, and the closet door popped open — it was a trick with the air. He said, ‘Whenever one door closes, another one always opens.’ So my tattoo means ‘Live without regrets.’ It’s not that you don’t regret things in life, but you at least try to learn from them. It’s misspelled too — so I literally have to live by that advice!” Hayden told Glamour.
Carrie Ann Inaba
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Back in 1993, Carrie Ann Inaba was on tour with Madonna when she made a “rash” decision to get a tattoo in Japanese. While she thought the characters said “courageous love,” she later learned that it actually meant something very different. She explained that the revelation came when she was in Japan and noticed a group of girls laughing at her tattoo — who then told her it’s actual NSFW meaning.
“I’m in Japan many years later and these girls were like ‘he hehe’ and I go, ‘I know, courageous love, cool right?’ and they were like, ‘Rough sex,’” Carrie Ann said on The Talk in 2019. “I need to fix it.”
