Thread: Advice on a memorial tattoo

Hi everybody!
I am a beginner at learning thai, and don't know the finesses, therefore I would like to ask you for an advice.
I am about to make a memorial tattoo for my deceased partner and also a tattoo for our son that I have. I like the expression ชั่วฟ้าดินสลาย a lot, and want to use it on the tattoo which will be meant both for the deceased one and for the baby. First and foremost it has to be something that a man can grammatically write for his son. I'd want to have only ชั่วฟ้าดินสลาย, without รัก or เธอ or other words - of course it is a tattoo, but still, does it sound good? Also, I wonder if placement like this
http://tinypic.com/r/x53uqd/8 or like this http://tinypic.com/r/ctjqf/8 which are both unusual, would be ok, or would look stupid? Please don't hesitate to tell me if my ideas are good, ok or wrong. I will be grateful for your opinion.

So You are not a Widow, how long ago was it when your Partner passed away.?

Written Thai doesn't really work very well when stacked and I recommend you to simply write it vertically instead.

It can definitely NOT be written like in the first pic, because writing this way just isn't comprehensible. The second pic works, but you have the unfortunate result that each word will look like they stand alone than together. This is kinda important in Thai because certain words when split can suddenly have an entire different meaning.

A similar analogy would be if you for example decides to write the word "important" and split it vertically to:

im
port
ant

Do you get the idea what I mean?

Unfortunately for you, the word ชั่ว can have 2 meanings in Thai. In your phrase, it means something related to time, like "during" or "always", exact meaning depends on context. This is the archaic meaning of this word and is usually only used in poetry.

However, the most common meaning of the word ชั่ว means "wicked" or "evil".

So, you may end up having something akin to "bastard" tattooed on you.

My advice, if you really like this phrase, then just tattoo it exactly like that ชั่วฟ้าดินสลาย but sideways. The text doesn't NEED to be aligned horizontally for a Thai to comprehend what's written. In fact, it will be much easier for a Thai to read it like that regardless of it's orientation, rather than you split it up and stack it vertically.

Also, let your tattoo artist stylize the text a bit so it won't look like you have something similar to "Time New Roman" font or something lame like that.