AI Tattoos
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Roman numeral tattoo
Type the date, get the numerals — checked, not guessed — and see them in real tattoo fonts on a photographed arm before anything is permanent. Then take the stencil to your artist.
How the Roman numeral tattoo converter works
Type something above and it appears here.
A demo body, not yours. The AI Tattoos app runs this on a photo of you — with the same fonts plus gradients, glow, shadow and texture effects. The letters follow the curve of the surface, which is where most flat mock-ups fall apart.
The card outline is the size of a real bank card — hold yours against it. If it does not match, calibrate the screen.
Layout
Style
Hollow black outlines, the way an artist traces them: solid fills smear on thermal stencil paper. Mirror it if you print it yourself.
Size
Hold a bank card against the screen and drag the slider until the outline matches its width. Then the preview and the ruler are true to life.
Ink spreads 10–20 % under the skin over the years and thin lines soften. Slide to see how the lettering will read later — "bold for old".
Ink colour
Dozens of tattoo effects — gradients, glow, 3D shadow, textures — are only available in the app right now. It’s entirely free.
Tattoo font 262 fonts
Over 150 fonts, most of them made in-house and unique to this site. Every row shows your text in that font; the text field, size and search stay pinned while you scroll. Free for personal and commercial use.
No font matches that. Try another word or clear the filter.
Why dates go on skin as Roman numerals
A birthday, a wedding, the day someone died, the day you got sober. Written as 12.04.1999 it looks like a form; written as XII · IV · MCMXCIX it reads as an inscription, private to the people who know what it means and quiet enough to sit on a wrist, a collarbone, a rib or the inside of a bicep. That is the whole appeal, and it is why the Roman numeral date has become one of the most common lettering tattoos.
It is also one of the most common tattoos to get wrong. Numerals follow strict rules, dates come in three different orders, and a single misplaced letter changes the year. This page does the conversion for you and shows you what the mistakes look like, so the version you hand to your artist is the right one.
How Roman numerals actually work
Seven letters: I (1), V (5), X (10), L (50), C (100), D (500), M (1000). You add from left to right, except that a smaller numeral placed before a larger one is subtracted — IV is 4, IX is 9, XL is 40, XC is 90, CD is 400, CM is 900. Only those six subtractions exist. 1999 is MCMXCIX (1000 + 900 + 90 + 9), never IMM or MIM, however tempting the shortcut looks.
Days and months are the easy part: 1 to 31 and 1 to 12. The year is where people slip. 2004 is MMIV. 1988 is MCMLXXXVIII, eight letters long, which is worth knowing before you plan a tiny finger tattoo. 2000 is a lonely MM. The converter below follows these rules exactly, including the subtraction cases, and it will not accept a date that does not exist.
Day, month, year — and the order trap
Europe writes day-month-year, the United States writes month-day-year, and a tattoo has no field labels. 04/12/1999 is the 4th of December to an American and the 12th of April to almost everyone else. When the numbers could go either way the converter shows you both readings and says so; pick the one that matches how you read dates, and tell your artist which order it is.
Separators are a design choice, not a rule. Dots and middle dots are the classic, dashes read cleaner in blocky fonts, a plain space works for stacked numerals, and slashes tend to fight with serifs. Try them in the chips and look at the result in the font you actually want, because a separator that looks fine in a sans-serif can look like a stray mark in a blackletter.
Fonts that suit numerals, and how big to go
Roman numerals are capitals by nature, so the fonts that were designed for inscriptions carry them best: Cinzel and Marcellus have the proportions of carved letters, and blackletter gives a numeral date real weight. Script works too, but a cursive V and X can be read as other letters at small sizes, so keep scripts for dates that will be large.
Size is where the artist earns their fee. A numeral string is mostly straight strokes and the letters sit close together, so as the ink spreads over the years neighbouring strokes creep toward each other. Keep capitals at least 6 to 8 mm tall on a forearm and larger on a wrist or a hand, and widen the letter spacing slightly for fine-line fonts. The size check and the ageing slider in the tool show you what that means for your date; the width slider sets the real size, and the PDF stencil prints at exactly that size.
How the Roman numeral tattoo converter works
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Type the date
Any common format: 12.04.1999, 04/12/1999, 1999-04-12, or just a year. The numerals appear as chips under the text field, one per separator style.
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Pick a chip and a font
The chip replaces your text with the numerals. Then scroll the font list — every row shows your date in that font — and set the size, spacing and curve.
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Check it on skin, download the stencil
Drag the numerals onto the body photo, set the real width, look at the ageing preview, then download the PNG, SVG or the true-to-size stencil PDF for your artist.
Frequently asked questions
How do I write my birthday in Roman numerals for a tattoo?
Convert the day, the month and the year separately and keep them in the order you read dates in. 12 April 1999 becomes XII · IV · MCMXCIX. Type the date into the converter on this page and it does exactly that, and shows both orders when the numbers are ambiguous.
Is 1999 MCMXCIX or MIM?
MCMXCIX. Roman numerals only allow six subtractions — IV, IX, XL, XC, CD, CM — so 1999 is 1000 + 900 + 90 + 9. MIM and IMM are not valid and an artist who knows numerals will refuse them.
Which order should the date be in?
Whichever order you naturally read: day-month-year in Europe and most of the world, month-day-year in the United States. There is no rule, but you must be consistent and tell your artist which one it is. The converter shows both when a date could be read either way.
What separator goes between the numerals?
Dots, middle dots, dashes, spaces or nothing at all — it is a design choice. Middle dots are the classic. Try them in the font you want; separators that work in a clean sans-serif can look like stray marks in an ornate font.
How small can a Roman numeral tattoo be?
Smaller than you think is a mistake: the strokes sit close together and ink spreads over the years. Keep capitals at least 6 to 8 mm tall on a forearm and bigger on hands, wrists or ribs. The size check in the tool tells you where your date lands.
Can I download a stencil?
Yes: a transparent PNG, a vector SVG, and a PDF that prints at exactly the width you set, in pure black, mirrored if you want. All free, no account.
Now see it on your own skin
The AI Tattoos app puts the same fonts on a photo of you, with colour, outline and effects, and keeps the design until your appointment.