Anchor Tattoos

Anchor tattoos have a very long and rich history of meaning and symbolism to those who choose to wear them and to those with whom they interact.

Nowadays Anchor Tattoos are usually associated with sailors but the history of the design spans back a long time in fact being once associated with early Christians. Anchor tattoos were used by the early Christians as a sort of a marker, so that they would recognize themselves because when Christianity was outlawed they couldn’t very well be wearing a cross tattoo, so that’s where anchor tattoo designs started being used, as a replacement for their religious symbol.

However those times are now long gone, and boat anchor tattoos have been more or less particularly associated with sailors, navy servicemen and other maritime workers in the past two hundred years of Western civilization.

Sometimes anchor tattoos were only worn by experienced sailors, or some would get anchor tattoos after they first crossed the Atlantic as a sort of a badge. Regardless of their very rich history, anchor tattoos are nowadays strongly seen as symbols of stability and in that regard they make a lot of sense to be worn by sailors. They work with anchors, anchors are used to keep a ship from rocking while stopped, and considering the fact that sailors have a job that makes them by definition not have many fixed reference points in their lives, it would’ve been inevitable for the anchor or anchor chain to become a symbol that they would use.

So anchor tattoos nowadays are used by sailors to symbolize a sense of stability or that of a strong foundation but usually of the spiritual kind meaning that there is a thing or a person in that sailor’s life that’s keeping him grounded regardless of what might be happening around him or her. This can either be their religious faith or a person such as a girlfriend or a wife or in some cases their children. Anchor tattoos are also used sometimes in conjunction with Italian tattoos sometimes meaning that usually sailors with an Italian heritage will sometimes choose to write a couple of words in Italian, whether it’s a creed or a motto to go by.

Interestingly enough anchor tattoos have come back in fashion in a big way expanding beyond the realm of sailors, because retro tattoo designs have been experiencing a resurgence being updated for the 21st century with new designs and colors as well as different placements on the body.

A great example of this is the fact that anchor tattoos have become rather popular with women who wouldn’t normally have anything to do with anchors, but they understand the design’s symbolism and choose to identify with it. This has also sparked some modifications to the classic anchor tattoos since some women choose to have them made as lower back tattoos or to combine them with fairy tattoos which have been traditionally associated with women.
The conclusion being that you don’t have to be a sailor anymore to wear anchor tattoos.

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