Ariana Grande is the most influential personality for choice of tattoos

How did you choose – or how would you choose – a motif for a tattoo? Some opt for symbolic phrases and designs, others prefer fun and creative inscriptions, while many use these indelible marks to pay tribute to a loved one or celebrity with carefully selected words, names or numbers. And when it comes to inspiration coming from the world of celebrities, it’s Ariana Grande who appears to be the favourite.

According to an analysis carried out by language learning platform Preply, which analysed worldwide Google search data, the American singer is the most inspirational personality when it comes to tattoos, with more than 1.3 million searches per year.

The God is a woman singer, who reportedly has around 50 tattoos on her own body, is proving to be a major influence for fans who choose lyrics, quotes and motifs related to her and even her name to be inked on her skin, but she is far from alone.

Harry Styles and Justin Bieber come second and third with 1,096,680 and 1,091,880 searches annually, while Rihanna and Pete Davidson “only” inspire 731,880 and 726,120 searches respectively per year. Next comes Jimin, one of the members of the South Korean group BTS (594,240 searches), Angelina Jolie (508,920), Ben Affleck (486,480), Shia Labeouf (486,120), Johnny Depp (405,960), Scarlett Johansson (401,160), and David Beckham (399,840).

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Japanese – the most popular language

Choosing a word, name, quotation or phrase in a language that is not one’s own is also a major trend when it comes to tattoos.

Japanese takes first place in this regard, with over 231,000 searches per year, just ahead of Chinese with almost 185,000 searches per year.

These two languages far outstrip all others, such as Arabic, which takes third place (81,600), Latin (53,400), Korean (40,920), Greek (37,800) and French (27,960). Surprisingly, English is only ranked 10th, with only 9,240 searches per year.

Another finding is that the USA counts the most tattooed people who regret their skin inkings, with over a million searches a year for tattoo removal and modification requests.

The country ranks ahead of Brazil (275,040 searches), the UK (217,200), India (119,880), Canada (98,520), Germany (98,400), Australia (97,200), and France (87,840).

For the purposes of this study, Preply analysed global Google search data to reveal the most popular type of foreign-language tattoo and the celebrities who inspired them based on online searches. Data collected in November 2022.