§ Symbol
Turtle
Honu
Polynesia · especially Hawaii
The sea turtle (honu, in Hawaiian) is associated in Polynesian tattooing with longevity, health and safe travel. In Hawaii some families regard it as their ʻaumakua, an ancestral guardian in animal form.
§ How I draw it
7 original drawings
None of these drawings gets tattooed as it is. They're the starting point: in the consultation the motif is adapted to your anatomy and to the rest of the piece.
§ Meaning
Longevity, health, safe travel.
Honu is the Hawaiian name for the sea turtle. It lives for many years and crosses great distances to return to the stretch of coast where it hatched to lay its eggs — hence the readings that recur most in Polynesian tattooing: longevity, health, finding your bearings and coming back to your people.
In Hawaii, some families hold the honu as their ʻaumakua, an ancestral guardian that takes animal form. That isn't a universal meaning of the turtle across Polynesia, but it's where much of the affection for it comes from.
It's one of the motifs I'm asked for most. It takes a lot of surface: the shell works as a canvas for patterns, tiki faces or shark teeth, depending on what each piece needs to say.
§ How it's drawn
An oval shell filled with pattern —triangles, bands, hexagons— with four curved flippers and a marked head. In several of my designs the shell holds a tiki face or a hei tiki figure.
Interested in a piece with this symbol?
In the consultation we work out how it fits your body and your story.
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