Unlike other body piercing types like belly button piercing and nose piercing, the tongue piercing is a typical modern piercing. No-one from the ancient tribes and cultures wore tongue body jewelry.
The only recordings of a ritual tongue piercing come from the ancient Aztecs, Mayas and some other North-American native tribes.
However, they didn’t perform the tongue piercing with a purpose of wearing some tongue jewelry in it. Their main goal was to let the blood split out as a sign of honoring the Gods.
But these days, apart from some crazy bod-mod guys who like cutting and scarring their bodies, tongue piercing is performed with a sole purpose of wearing tongue jewelry in it.
So let’s look at how many different tongue piercing types are known out there – and what tongue jewelry can be worn with every of those.
The first and the most common type of tongue piercing is a usual vertical tongue piercing. In this case the tongue is pierced through the middle from bottom to the top and a straight barbell is inserted into the fresh piercing. Right after the piercing the tongue will swell up so usually a longer barbell will be inserted into the piercing which can later be replaced by a shorter one.
Variations of the usual tongue piercing are multiple tongue piercings when a person wears more than just one tongue ring. A separate case of a multiple tongue piercing is a venom piercing or a double tongue piercing because it resembles the placement of a snake’s fangs.
So apart from tongue piercings that go from the bottom to the top of the tongue, what other options do we have when it comes to choosing the tongue jewelry placement?
Well, horizontal tongue piercing is another type of tongue piercing and it’s not that common. In this case the piece of body jewelry – a straight barbell most likely – will pierce the tongue through from the left side to the right side. And another variation of this piercing is a Scoop piercing – a vertical tongue piercing, only the ends of the jewelry will face upwards and the body jewelry used is going to be a hoop.
And lastly – there are folks who go for piercing the web under their tongue instead! This is called just what it is – tongue web piercing – and you can wear small captive bead rings, straight and curved barbells into these tongue piercings.
