Peace symbol

At the end of a year and the start of a new year, we often hear the phrase "Peace on Earth."  Though it started as a symbol of nuclear disarmament, the peace sign that most people know from the 1950s has grown to apply to (and be applied to) all kinds of things.

A number of peace symbols have actually been used in various cultures and contexts. The dove and olive branch was used symbolically by early Christians. It was used as a secular peace symbol and popularized by a dove lithograph by Pablo Picasso after World War II.

In the 1950s the "peace sign", as it is known today, was designed by Gerald Holtom as the logo for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). That was a group at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK. It was later adopted by anti-war and counterculture activists in the US and elsewhere. 

The symbol was made by superimposing the semaphore signals for the letters "N" and "D" (for Nuclear Disarmament).

1960s button for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament CC0, Link

The V hand sign 

The V hand sign most commonly used to mean "peace" began as a "V for Victory" and was popularized during World War II by Winston Churchill and is displayed with the back of the hand toward the signer.

During the Vietnam War, in the 1960s, Americans began to use the "V sign" with the palm of the hand facing outward as a symbol of peace. The V hand signal and the peace flag also became international peace symbols.

The V (victory) hand sign when displayed with the palm inward toward the signer (shown on the right above) can be an offensive gesture in some countries and dates back to at least 1900.

Listen to a podcast  Who Created the Peace Sign (and Why)?

Rx (prescription)

I found several different theories about the origin of this symbol "Rx" used by doctors before a prescription. Is it an abbreviation? Is it some ancient chemical symbol?

Several origins sound less credible. One source said that Rx is a corruption of the symbol for Jupiter and that a prayer to Jupiter would speed healing. That doesn't make sense to me since Jupiter (also known as Jove) was the god of the sky and thunder and king of the gods in Ancient Roman religion and mythology and not associated with healing.

I couldn't find a symbol for the god, but the symbol for the planet looks like an odd 4 and is said to represent an eagle, which is Jupiter's bird.

Another theory is that the Rx symbol evolved from the Eye of Horus, an ancient Egyptian symbol associated with healing powers. This has a bit more believability because pharmacy has been around for thousands of years and the first recorded prescriptions were etched on a clay tablet in Mesopotamia around 2100 B.C. There were the equivalent of drugstores in Baghdad in the eighth century A.D.

The problem is that the Eye of Horus (also known as wadjet, wedjat or udjat) though it is an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection, royal power, and good health, doesn't look like the Rx.

The most likely origin is that this symbol seen on doctor’s prescription pads and signs in pharmacies is derived from the Latin word “recipe,” meaning “take.”  The word recipe has had the same function from the 13th through the 17th centuries. The two letters were a 19th-century way of easily reproducing a 16th-century symbol - the letter R with a line through its slanted leg.
℞  that meant the "R" is functioning as an abbreviation - not an X.
It wasn't till around 1911 that "Rx" came to be used as meaning the the noun "prescription." A recipe associated with cooking came into being in the early 17th century, which is when America’s earliest drugstores came into being in big cities. The first college of pharmacy in the United States was founded in 1821 in Philadelphia.

Today in America, the centuries old mortar and pestle - tools of the trade - is often used by pharmacists as an industry symbol along with Rx.

Pound, Number sign or Hashtag

What’s the origin of the hashtag  # symbol?

Well, right off we need to note that it has be known by several names: the pound sign, the number sign, the octothorpe and the hashtag. 

Though the hashtag usage is recent, it also has an origin going back to ancient Rome.

As a hashtag, it precedes a word or phrase to clarify or categorize the accompanying text. It came into wide use in the past decade via social networks, especially on Twitter. Looking at the Twitter home page, you can see the currently trending (popular) hashtags. People can follow hashtags to see what content has been posted about the subject, such as #DonaldTrump or #ClimateChange, and follow online trends.

The first use of the pound sign on Twitter was:

How do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]? 

by Chris Messina ("factoryjoe") on August 23, 2007.



The possible ancient origin is to the symbol ℔, an abbreviation of the Roman term libra pondo, which translates as "pound weight." Ultimately, the symbol was reduced for clarity as an overlay of two horizontal strokes "=" across two slash-like strokes "//".

The symbol is described as the "number" character in an 1853 treatise on bookkeeping. It seems to have been used primarily in handwritten materials. In the printing business, the numero (№) symbol and barred-lb (℔) are used for "number" and "pounds" respectively. It appeared on the keyboard of the Remington Standard typewriter in 1886.

To confuse our international readers, the US pound sign, number sign or hash symbol "#" is often used in information technology to highlight a special meaning. But "Pound sign" in the UK means "£"  and is used for money, while "#" is called hash, gate, and occasionally octothorpe.

The symbol is also used in several ways in computer coding.

The graphically similar symbol of the sharp (♯) is used in musical nomenclature. Also similar is the the equal-and-parallel symbol (⋕) from mathematics, though both of these are distinguished by its combination of level horizontal strokes and right-tilting vertical strokes.

xoxo hugs, kisses and SWAK

When and why did x's and o's become a symbol for hugs and kisses?

xoxo (generally lowercase letters) is a way to express love or good friendship at the end of a written letter - and now in email and SMS text messages.

Which letter represents which action? That is not actually clear, but the custom of placing "X" on envelopes, notes and at the bottom of letters to mean kisses dates back to the Middle Ages.

The symbol x is the letter taw in early Hebrew (and in Ezekiel, a mark set “upon the foreheads” of men) and chi in Greek. A Christian cross was used on medieval documents or letters to mean faith and honesty. It can still be seen on Medieval churches as a symbol of Christ and is why we sometimes see Christmas written as Xmas.

The Chi Rho is one of the earliest forms of christogram, and is formed by superimposing the first two (capital) letters chi and rho (ΧΡ) of the Greek word "ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ" = KRistos = Christ to produce the monogram.

It is said that the pronunciation of the letter "X" in Spanish, though generally transliterated as equis, sounds like a native Spanish speaker saying "a kiss" in English.

The x also became the signature of choice in the Middle Ages since most of the common people could not read or write. A literal kiss would be placed upon the cross of a letter by the signer as a display of their sworn oath. Documents sealed with an x embossed in wax or lead (letters, books, oaths of political and economic fealty between kings and their vassals)were "sealed with a kiss.”

Much later, the acronym SWAK became popular during World War I for soldiers to imprint on their letters home.

There is speculation that the use of o may be of a more modern American origin. When arriving in the United States, Jewish immigrants, most of whose first language was Yiddish, would use an 'O' to sign documents, rather than the Christian X as a sign of the cross. Immigration inspectors called anyone who signed with an “o” “a kikel [circle in Yiddish] or kikeleh [little circle], which was shortened to kike,” and eventually took on a derogatory meaning.


Still, the origin of O as a hug and the combining of X and O is debatable.

Some interpret X as the crossed arms of a hug and O as the puckered lips of a kiss. How about X representing the four lips of a kiss and O the four arms of a hug?

The Oxford English Dictionary states that X is "used to represent a kiss, esp. in the subscription to a letter."

Some sources say that, based on the pronunciation of the letters, X sounds like 'kiss' and O sounds like 'hold', as in 'I hold you'.

The Dollar Sign

The origin of the dollar sign $  is actually not totally clear.

The dollar sign is also known as the peso sign and is used to indicate the various dollar and peso units of currency around the world.

One explanation is that it is derived from the superimposition of the U and S of United States.

On the far end of likelihood is the theory is that the sign is linked to the slave trade, and the Spanish words for a slave (esclavo) and the nail (clavo) that locked the shackles. It is suggested that an S with a nail (S and clavo) was written as $.

The sign is found in business correspondence between the British, Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans in the 1770s, as referring to the Spanish-Mexican peso, which was also known as the "Spanish dollar" or "pieces of eight." It was adopted as U.S. currency in 1785, together with the term "dollar" and the $ sign.

The most widely accepted explanation is that it is the result of the evolution of the Spanish and Mexican scribal abbreviation "ps" for pesos. This theory, derived from a study of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century manuscripts, explains that the s gradually came to be written over the p developing a close equivalent to the "$" mark

Oddly, neither US paper bills nor coins actually feature the $ sign.

The Euro Symbol

The euro sign was designed to be a highly recognizable symbol of Europe and one that was easily handwritten.

The symbol was “inspired" by the Greek letter epsilon, which recalls classical times and the cradle of European civilization. The two parallel lines represent stability.

Though he is uncredited, Arthur Eisenmenger, a graphic designer for the European Community. Eisenmenger designed the European Union flag and the “CE” mark. He has said that in 1974 he simply fused the letters C and E.

Why is # called pound?

The pound sign derives from the capital L written in cursive script, with one or two horizontal bars bisecting it to indicate it is an abbreviation. The symbol derives from capital "L", standing for libra, the basic Roman unit of weight, which is in turn derived from the Latin libre meaning scales or a balance. (We know this also in Libra, the astrological sign that is represented by scales.) A pound of silver was the standard on which the monetary unit was based

The pound sign ("£" or "₤") is the symbol for the pound sterling—the currency of the United Kingdom (UK). and is used for similarly named currencies in some other countries and territories.In English-language use, the pound sign is placed before the number (£2 not  2£).

The symbol "₤" is also known as the lira sign. In Italy, prior to the adoption of the euro, the symbol was used as an alternative to the more usual L to indicate prices in lire (but always with double horizontal lines).

However, in the U.S.A. when the # symbol follows a number, it is read as "pounds" referring to the unit of weight, as in "5# of sugar" ("five pounds of sugar"). When # precedes a number, it is read as "number", as in "a #2 pencil" ("a number two pencil").

The symbol is more frequently referred to as the pound sign, but is also known as the number sign.

Why the confusing usage?

There have been a series of abbreviations for pound, the unit of weight. At first "lb." was used; however, printers later designed a font containing a special symbol of an "lb" with a line through the verticals so that the lowercase letter L "l" would not be mistaken for the numeral/digit "1". The symbol ℔ is called the "L B Bar Symbol", and it is a cursive development of this symbol. Ultimately, the symbol was reduced for clarity as an overlay of two horizontal strokes "=" across two forward-slash-like strokes "//" or the familiar # symbol.

Americans are used to referring to the # as the pound key in reference to the telephone keys, since saying "Press the number key" would be confusing - Which number key?

In the UK, the symbol is most often called the hash symbol or hash sign and it is rarely used in the UK to designate a number like in North America. It is never used to refer to pounds as a unit of weight (lb is commonly used for this). Furthermore, it is never called the pound sign since the term "pound sign" is understood to mean the currency symbol, £, for pound sterling.

Is that clear? Then let's make it a bit more confusing by adding the use of the # symbol on services such as Twitter where they are known as "hash tags."

A Twitter search for #nj will turn up tweets that as marked as being about New Jersey. Hash tags show up as the "trending topics" on Twitter's home page and are often created for events becoming "micro-memes" for attendees and interested parties. For example, the hash tag #SXSW would turn up posts related to the South by Southwest festivals.