ETYMOLOGY AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF TATTOOING IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES

Tattooing a kind of body ornament, acts as means of production conveying the feeling, thinking and behaviour patterns of the society. it is also the symbolic communication of that society. the study on tattooing, consists of correspondences for words in different languages and etymology of these words and historical development of tattooing in the different cultures. in this section, due to the fact that the historical background of the subject is too comprehensive, it could be possible to include only the etymology of the tattoo word and historical development of the tattooing tradition. the study aims to clarify how the tattoing passes from one society to another and how various societis attribute original meanings and functions to tattooing and how tattooing tradition has very rich meaning, functions and practices throughout thousand years. when discussing the subject not only a chronological or geographical order was followed, but also smilar and different meanings attributed by different cultures were taken into consideration through folklore methods such as cultural diffusion and holistic&comparative approach. thus, by considering each society's specific historical, geographical and cultural conditions, the process of cultural diffussion of tattoing has been tried to be revealed all over the world. besides the functionality of tattooing in the historical development of the various societies has been discussed through the point of functional folklore.