Our everyday lives are saturated with symbols that are designed to express ideas from the
logos of automobile manufacturers, to the buttons on your television remotes.
Many of us take these symbols for granted. And even though we know what they stand for,
we rarely have any understanding of their origins or their secret meanings.
Join us as we count down some of the most pervasive and enigmatic symbols in society
and what they actually mean. Number 9: The Jesus fish.
It's a bit racier than you might think. This iconic fish symbols often called the
Icthys, has often been used as a synonym for the Christian faith and features prominently
on everything from billboards to bumper stickers. Early Christians use this symbol because it
was an acrostic for the name of Jesus Christ. In other words, in Greek, each letter of Icthys
stood for part of Jesus's full name, which was spelled out as I-sous Chri-stos, The-ou,
Yi-os, So-ter. However, going back further, the Icthys fish
symbol had quite a different meaning. In the pagan traditions this symbol called the Vesicapisces
and symbolized fertility, in particular the vagina and feminine energy.
Try turning the symbol sideways. And it's pretty self-explanatory
Number 8: Female and Male Symbols. Perhaps most popularized by horoscopes and
dating services, the symbols for man and woman are two of the most common that we find in
our daily lives. But very few people actually know where these
symbols come from. In reality, they find their roots in alchemy,
an old form of mystical science that was concerned with astrology and chemistry.
The male symbol represents the astrological sign for Mars.
And in earlier forms had a dot in the circle that stood for the sun or gold. Many think
the circle and arrow, denote a shield and spear. Signifying the God of war, which was
Mars. The female symbol on the other hand is taught
to have been inspired by a mirror or by a necklace that would have been used by women
during the time. The astrological symbol was known as chalkos,
where we get the word copper from and Signified Venus, who was the dominant female deity to
the Greeks. Number 7: Bluetooth Runes.
That strange little symbol on the side of your Bluetooth devices isn't just a stylized
B. The inventors of Bluetooth borrowed from Norse
mythology in designing their logo, which is a bind rune or two rune that have been combined.
In Norse mythology, the gift of runes had been passed down to humans by Odin and each
rune had its own letter and separate meaning. By combining the runes for H or Hagall and
B Bjarkan, you end up with the Bluetooth symbol. But why H and B? they're actually the initials
of a real-life Danish king, Harald Bluetooth, who United a number of the tribes back in
the ninth set. Today, his legacy lives on, in the forms of
Bluetooth technology, uniting us to the internet and each other.
Number 6: The Pause Symbol In poetry. You're watching one of your favourite movies
and the phone rings. So, you reach for the remote to hit pause
without realizing it. You are in fact exercising, one of the oldest
linguistic tools in the history of literacy. The double bars of the pause button or something
we take for granted and barely think about it.
But they have their roots in a very influential, poetic tradition.
Back in the Greek age, the double line indicated a pause or caesura in a song or poem where
one could take a breath. Number 5: The Mystery of on and off and USB.
There are a number of symbols related to computers that we have come to accept at face value
in terms of their function. One of the most popular of course is the on/off
symbol that features a small vertical line inside a circle.
It has become universal, appearing not only on our computers, but on t-shirts, posters
and even condoms. In reality, it was meant to signify binary
code, with one meaning “on” and zero meaning “off”, simple, right?
Number 4: Bio Hazard Symbol as A Tattoo The bio hazard symbol is another one of the
most recognizable symbols in our culture. In part, because it is meant to warn us of
danger. The creators of the symbol however, didn't
have any hidden agendas in designing it and only wanted something that would look distinctive.
However, that didn't stop others from adapting it to their own meanings, by putting it on
company logos, video games and clothes. Some have taken it even further though.
In a number of LGBQT friendly communities in urban centers, gay men often tattoo this
symbol on themselves in order to indicate that they have HIV or aids and to raise public
awareness. Number 3: Mitsubishi Family Crest
Ever wondered about the different logos that car companies use, from Toyota to Subaru.
There is often a lot more to these calls than meets the eye. And the Mitsubishi logo is
no exception. Used since 1870, the three diamonds arranged
in a triangle is actually the adapted family crest of shipping magnate, Yataro Iwasaki
and the family crest of the Yamanouchi family from the ancient Tosa clan.
The Iwasaki crest was a three-tiered water Chestnut or Sangai-bishi while the Tosa clan’s
crest was three Oak leaves or Mitsu-gashiwa. Add them together and you get Mitsubishi.
Number 2: The Democratic Donkey and Republican Elephant.
Anyone familiar with American politics will immediately recognize the symbols used to
distinguish the two main parties. On the Democrats side, the image of the donkey
can be traced back to the 1828 election in which Andrew Jackson was running for president.
Because of his stubborn personality, many of his opponents took to calling him a jackass.
Rolling with the punches, he took the insult and adapted it to become a symbol of being
strongly willed. This was later iconized by the political cartoonist,
Thomas Nast who used the image of the donkey thereafter to refer to the democratic party.
Nast was also responsible for introducing the elephant symbol into American politics
to refer to the opposing Republican party. In a famous cartoon that appeared in Harper's
weekly in 1874. He signified the Republicans as an elephant,
running away from the democratic donkey who was dressed up as a lion.
There is a certain irony that the strongest political parties in the U S found their origins
in satire. Number 1: Peace Signs and Nuclear Disarmament.
The last symbol in our video, and by far, one of the most influential is probably the
peace sign. Designed by British graphic designer Gerald
holtom in 1958, its original purpose was to protest the use of nuclear weapons.
He wanted to use the Semaphore alphabet, which is a form of communicating, using flags and
arm movements and overlapping the letters ‘N’ and ‘D’ in the design to stand
for nuclear disarmament. Later, Holtom revealed that he had also been
very depressed at this period in his life, and that the peace sign was a stylized stick
figure of himself with head down and arms out stretched.
Holtom never copyrighted the symbol, which is one of the reasons it appears everywhere,
including in the logo for the environmental group Greenpeace.
That concludes our video of some of the more interesting common everyday symbols.
You might not have known the true meaning of!
Were you surprised by any of their origins? or
Can you think of any popular symbols in everyday life that have an enigmatic backstory?
Feel free to leave your thoughts or suggestions in the comments below.