Symbol for love

How the heart became the symbol for love

People have linked love to the heart since antiquity, because strong feelings seem to be felt in the chest. The tidy two-lobed shape we draw today looks nothing like a real heart, though. It settled into its modern form in late-medieval Europe, spread through religious art and courtly romance, and reached everyday life on playing cards and Valentine’s cards.

That history is why the most compatible heart character is a card suit: ♥ is the “black heart suit”, and it sits in the heart symbols collection next to its outline twin ♡. The heart suit page shows how to type it, including Alt + 3 on Windows.

The red heart emoji ❤️

❤️ is a dingbat heart (U+2764) followed by an invisible emoji selector, which is why it can look black in some fonts and red on phones. Its many relatives carry shades of meaning: 💕 two hearts for affection, 💘 the heart pierced by Cupid’s arrow for falling in love, 💝 a gift of love. The red rose 🌹 comes from the Victorian “language of flowers”, where red roses stood for romantic love.

Infinity for love that lasts

The mathematician John Wallis introduced ∞ in 1655 to mean an endless quantity. In the last few decades it became a popular sign for eternal love, often drawn with a heart in one loop on jewellery and tattoos. There is no single Unicode character for that combination, so people write ∞♥ side by side. More on the sign itself is on the infinity symbol page.

Love in other scripts

愛 (ai) is the Japanese and traditional Chinese character for love, and 爱 is the simplified Chinese form used in mainland China. Both are real words, not decorations, so they read correctly to anyone who knows the language. More characters with their meanings are in our Chinese symbols collection. For text faces that show affection, try the love kaomoji.

Love overlaps with friendship, and the two share symbols such as the yellow heart; see the symbols for friendship.