7 famous icons but few people understand the meaning

In everyday life, we can all encounter and use thousands of symbols in different situations. However, did you ever wonder about the origin of the symbols? And are we using them properly?

The Bright Side website has decided to explore these two questions. As a result, they have decoded seven famous symbols that we use everyday but little is known about their true origins and meaning.

Sign &

The & symbol (called "ampersand") is used to represent Latin "et", meaning the equivalent of "and" in Vietnamese.This symbol was created by Tiro, the private secretary of Cicero, a famous Roman philosopher. In order to speed up the recording, Tiro created a system of abbreviations for himself and later referred to them as "Tironian Notes".

Many of the following poems, symbols & became popular in Europe and America. This symbol had the honor of being at the last position in the English alphabet, and it was only considered to be eliminated in the early 20th century. The name "ampersand" of the notation & essentially stands for The phrase "And per se and", usually spoken by teachers after reading an English alphabet from A to Z for students.

Also, the & quot; & quot; is a combination of the letters "e" and "t" in the word "et". You can see the process of combining in the graphics to make it easier to visualize.

Heart icon

Although people generally believe that "love is rooted in the heart," it is clear that the true shape of the heart has little in common with the symbol we are using today. Currently, there are a number of different hypotheses about the origin of this symbol:

- When a swan meets a partner on a lake, they form a heart-shaped figure. In many cultures in the world, swans represent love, loyalty and devotion because they live in pairs for the rest of their lives.

- Another theory is that the heart symbol was originally used to represent the female body. Proponents of this hypothesis claim that the heart symbol is intended to describe the shape of a woman's pelvis. The ancient Greeks were known to worship the pelvis and the buttocks of women. They even set up a special temple for worshiping the buttocks for Aphrodite, the goddess of human desires.

In addition, there is a theory that the heart symbol represents the ivy leaf. On the ancient Greek vase, the ivy leaf is often used to describe Dionysus, the god of wine creation and the patron of wine.

Bluetooth icon

In the 10th century AD, Denmark was ruled by King Harald Blatand, a famous historical figure for unifying the Danish tribes into a nation. King Harald is also known as "Bluetooth" (meaning blue tooth) because his hobby of eating blueberries has made at least one of his teeth turn blue forever.

Bluetooth technology was born in 1994 to connect many electronic devices to a single public network. The symbol representing this technology is a combination of two Scandinavian ancient characters, "Hagall", the equivalent of "H" in Latin and "Bjarkan", the equivalent of "B" in Latin. . These two ancient letters constitute the initials of King Harald Blatand, nicknamed "Bluetooth" as mentioned above.

Also, there is an interesting fact that the first Bluetooth device in the world is blue and looks like a tooth.

Medical icon

Many people do not know that the medical symbol as we are seeing today (a stick with wings with two snakes crawling around) was born due to a mistake.

According to legend, the Greek Hermes (equivalent to the Mercury of the Romans) possesses a magic stick called Caduceus and is shaped like a medical symbol. The Caduceus can prevent any dispute or confrontation, but it obviously has nothing to do with medicine or medicine.

The simple fact is that more than 100 years ago, doctors in the US Army mistaken Caduceus with the rod of Asclepius.Both gods look quite similar, but Asclepius's rod has no wings and only a snake crawls around. Asclepius was known as the ancient Greek medicine god.

This confusion was ignored and gradually became the medical symbol as we are seeing today.

The "Power button" icon

The "Power Button" icon can be found on many devices but little is known about its origin.

In the early 1940's, engineers used binary to represent specific switches. That storage, "1" means that the switch is on and "0" means that the switch is off. In the following decades, the "source node" symbol gradually became a combination of a circle (symbolized by zero) and a vertical line (symbolized by the number 1) as we see it.

Peace symbol

The peace symbol was created in 1958 during protests against the use of nuclear weapons. This symbol is a combination of the letters "N" and "D", which stands for "Nuclear Disarmament" in the semaphore system. Hand).

In the semaphore character table, the letter "N" is represented by two flags holding the letter V inverted and the letter "D" shown by holding a flag pointing straight to the sky while the other flag points to the ground. In combination, we get the peace symbol.

OK icon

Most people understand the OK symbol as the hand gesture in the picture above means "okay" or "okay". However, not where this symbol is also positive. For example, in France, hand gestures mean that you are referring to someone as nothing.

Currently, there are some assumptions about the origin of the OK icon:

-Many people believe that the OK symbol stands for "Old Kinderhook, New York," the birthplace of the 8th President of the United States, Martin Van Buren. During the campaign, President Van Buren used the nickname "OK", the first two letters of his hometown. At that time, the campaign slogan nominated by President Van Buren was "Old Kinderhook is OK" and the posters calling for him were all OK icons.

Another theory is that the 7th president of the United States, Andrew Jackson, often uses this symbol when he makes his decisions. President Jackson often wrote "All correct" to "Oll korrect" (a sentence equivalent in German) or shorter than OK.

- Finally, another theory is that the OK symbol is simply a symbol for "buddha," a gesture in Buddhist and Hindu ritual."Buddha" is the gesture of the spirit of learning and many of the Buddhist literature has depicted the nuns often leave such hands.