No matter what you are looking for in a tattoo, there are plenty of ideas to choose from. Talk to your tattoo artist about your options, and be sure to look online and in magazines for inspiration. With a little bit of planning, you can get the perfect tattoos for men.

Tattoos are a type of body modification where a design is made by inserting ink, dyes, and pigments, either indelible or temporary, into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. The art of making tattoos is tattooing. Tattoos fall into three broad categories: purely decorative (with no specific meaning); symbolic (with a specific meaning pertinent to the wearer); and pictorial (a depiction of a specific person or item). Tattoos are sometimes used by forensic pathologists to help them identify burned, putrefied, or mutilated bodies.

The word tattoo, or tattow in the 18th century, is a loanword from the Samoan word tatau, meaning "to strike". The Oxford English Dictionary gives the etymology of tattoo as "In 18th c. tattaow, tattow. From Polynesian (Samoan, Tahitian, Marquesan, etc.) tatau. In Marquesan, tatu." Before the importation of the Polynesian word, the practice of tattooing had been described in the West as painting, scarring, or staining.

Tattooing has been practiced across the globe since at least Neolithic times. Ötzi the Iceman, dating to the late fourth millennium BC, was found in the Ötztal Alps with 57 carbon tattoos consisting of simple dots and lines on his lower spine, behind his left knee, and on his right ankle. In Polynesia, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville described in 1768 receiving a turtle tattoo on his left hand.