Black line drawing chart numbering ten traditional Samoan tattoo designs, each labelled with its Samoan name and meaning, such as fetu for star and gogo for seagull.

Samoan tattoo designs reference chart

Black and grey · Flash

A numbered reference chart of ten Samoan tattoo motifs drawn in black line on a white background. Each design is shown beside a yellow numbered badge and its Samoan name with an English meaning, including star, protected, seagull, jellyfish, starfish, cross, worm or caterpillar, and a group of three designs labelled as a headrest used when lying down. The chart is simple and evenly spaced, with a handwritten-style heading at the top.

Star Jellyfish Starfish Cross Symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The board had hung in the net store for forty years before anyone thought to read it. Nessa found it on the Tuesday the boat came in short, scraping lichen off the planks with a butter knife while her uncle swore at the winch. Ten shapes in black paint, each with a number, each with a name written underneath in a hand that leaned like a man walking into wind.

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She copied them into the back of the ledger because it was the only paper dry enough. Fetu, a star with its arms folded in. Malu, which meant protected, a diamond with hooks at its corners. Gogo, the seagull, one stroke forked at the top. Alualu, the jellyfish, a cross with its legs cut short. Aveau, the starfish. Toluse, the cross proper. Anufe, the worm, a line that would not stay straight. Then three shapes bracketed together like a sentence somebody had forgotten to finish, and beside them the word headrest, for lying down.

Her uncle asked what she was doing at midnight with a torch. She said the names were better company than the numbers on the tide tables. He grunted, which from him was a blessing.

On the last page she drew the headrest from memory, the three shapes stacked, and under it wrote what the board had not: that a man who lies down on a boat has to trust the hull to carry him. She shut the ledger, switched off the torch, and listened for the gulls to wake the harbour, certain that all ten of them were keeping watch while she slept.