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Can anyone here tell me what this tattoo says? I specify that it's Chinese because I know that sometimes it's not the same in Japanese.

銘爺...

The first character is "ming2" which means "inscribed motto", and the second is "ye2" which means "grandfather" or "old gentleman". My Chinese is really basic, so I'm sure someone will come in later and fill you in, but this word isn't in any dictionaries. As far as a Google search has shown, it seems to be a name rather than a term...

Well, here's the story. My cousin put this tattoo on his leg, and claims it means "In memory of my father, forever". But he doesn't know the first thing about Chinese (or any Asian language) and he said he did research to figure out how to write it. Thing is, I was curious as to whether he actually got it right. It'd be real embarassing if he didn't... XD
But everywhere I looked online I couldn't find these symbols either, but maybe I didn't look in the right place, or hard enough...

Aka-chan pretty much got it.

I just wanted to add a bit more info:

First character 'ming' - carries the concept of 'inscribe', 'engrave' or 'unforgettably'.

Second character 'ye' - means 'father' or 'grandfather'. But it's almost always used in the context of 'grandfather'.

I guess it can be interpreted as "in memory of my father, forever" - though I am not sure if this is what native Chinese speakers would have written to express that.

To me, it would seem that more characters would have been required to convey such a meaning, unless you were writing ancient Chinese.

The dictionary I used is:
http://www.yellowbridge.com/language/chinese-dictionary.php

Cheers.

Wow, that Yellow Bridge Dictionary is really awesome! I've never seen one like that before!
Thanks for the help. I guess, at the very least, the tattoo could say, "Unforgettable father", or something like that?

It could - though I've never seen that phrase used before. But, I don't consider myself an expert on Chinese, so I could just be ignorant.

Sorry I can't confirm one way or another.