The words
What each tradition calls it, and what the word meant first. Four answers, and they line up with the method rather than with the map.
It means to prick 7
| deq | deq | Kurdish | From Syriac *dyoqo*, puncturing. A male tattooist is *deqqak*, a female one *deqqake*. |
|---|---|---|---|
| गोदना | godna | Hindi | To prick. The noun for the tattoo and the verb for the needle are the same word. |
| 針突 | hajichi | Okinawan | Needle-strike. Written with the characters for needle and thrust. |
| ထိုးကွင်း | htoe kwin | Burmese | *Htoe* is to prick or pierce; *kwin* is a ring or an enclosure. The name describes the framed rings the figures sit in. |
| ᑲᑭᓐᓂᖅ | kakiniq | Inuktitut | From the Proto-Inuit-Yupik root *kaki-, to pierce or prick — the same root across Iñupiaq, Inuktitut, West Greenlandic and Tunumiit. |
| สัก | sak | Thai / Khmer | To prick. The Khmer root *cɔkʔ* means the same, and the Khmer dictionary keeps it native rather than borrowed. |
| sicanje | sicanje | Croatian | Pricking. Colloquially also *bocanje* and *bockanje*, which mean the same and sound like it. |
It means to strike 1
| tatau | tatau | Samoan | The Polynesian word English borrowed. Cook's crew wrote it down in 1769 and it displaced every English word for the practice. |
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It means a pattern 4
| batok | batok | Visayan / Kalinga | From Proto-Austronesian *beCik, tattoo, with relatives *patik, mottled, and *burik, speckled — the word for a pattern, applied to skin, cloth and pot alike. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ming | ming | Chin | The Chin word for the facial marks. Banned by name in the 1960s. |
| moko | moko | Māori | *Tā* is to strike; *moko* is the design itself. The verb in the name is the mallet, not the point. |
| สักขาลาย | sak kha lai | Northern Thai | To prick the legs in patterns — the verb, the body part and the word for pattern, in that order. No separate noun for the tattoo is needed. |
It means to write 2
| ptasan | ptasan | Squliq Atayal | Related to the Atayal word for writing and marking — the face as a written surface. |
|---|---|---|---|
| ᨲᩫ᩠ᩅᨾᩮᩬᩨᨦ | tua mueang | Northern Thai | The northern letters — Tai Tham script, the script of the region's manuscripts and of the yant that go on northern skin. Khom is the central convention, not the northern one. |
Something else 4
| アンチピリ | anchi-piri | Ainu | Obsidian and a cut: the word carries the tool and the wound, and no word for ink. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 入れ墨 | irezumi | Japanese | Inserting ink. The word names the material and the direction of travel, and nothing about the hand. |
| ลาวพุงดำ | lao phung dam | Thai | "Black-bellied Lao" — a central Thai name for the tattooed northerner, applied from outside and carrying a view with it. |
| veiqia | veiqia | Fijian | The practice and the marks, in one word — and a tattooist is a *dauveiqia*, one who does veiqia. |
Four families, and they line up with the method rather than with the geography.
Prick — Thai and Khmer sak, Inuktitut kaki-, Hindi godna, Kurdish deq, Croatian sicanje, Burmese htoe, Okinawan hajichi. Every one of them is a poking tradition, and the word is the verb for what the needle does.
Strike — Samoan and Polynesian tatau, Māori tā, Marquesan patu. Every one of them is a tapping tradition, and the word is the verb for the mallet.
Pattern — Austronesian batok, patik, burik; Northern Thai lai. The word is the design, and it is the same word used for the pattern on a pot or a cloth.
Write — Atayal ptasan; and in Lanna, the tool for tattooing is the same lek char stylus used to write a palm-leaf manuscript.
Inference — a language names the tattoo after whichever part of it that culture finds most salient: the movement, the tool, the design, or the literacy. Four answers, and none of them is "the picture".