
Kinship charts use a triangle △ for male and circle ○ for female. Minimal kinship chart: a male and female producing male and female offspring They are sometimes abstracted to ▽ for male and △ for female. The modern international pictograms used to indicate male and female public toilets, 🚹 and 🚺, became widely used in the 1960s and 1970s. These are also used on public toilets in some countries. In genealogy, including kinship in anthropology and pedigrees in animal husbandry, the geometric shapes △ or □ are used for male and ○ for female. In his Mantissa Plantarum (1767) and Mantissa Plantarum altera (1771), Carl Linnaeus regularly used the planetary symbols of Mars, Venus and Mercury – ♂, ♀, ☿ – for male, female and hermaphroditic (perfect) flowers, respectively. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.Ī gender symbol is a pictogram or glyph used to represent sex and gender, for example in biology and medicine, in genealogy, or in the sociological fields of gender politics, LGBT subculture and identity politics. 4.This article contains special characters. Each half contains a dot of the opposite color. The symbol represents duality, and is portrayed as a circle divided into two halves, one black and the other white. It symbolizes the same thing in both religions – the balance in life between opposing forces. More commonly viewed as a Taoist symbol, the Yin Yang symbol is also used in Confucianism. It’s also simple, natural, and flexible, which align with the principles and teachings of Confucianism. In Confucianism, however, it has the added meaning of peace, balance, and tranquility, all of which represent the true goal of this philosophy. One of the Five Elements, Water is viewed as the Source of Life. The water ideogram is very popular in Chinese culture in general, and not just in Confucianism. This symbol is also commonly used in wedding ceremonies in China, as it represents the harmony between the newlyweds. As such, this symbol expresses the main goals of Confucianism, which this philosophy aims to achieve through a universal adherence to tradition and ancestral worship. The water symbol is used to express tranquility and dignity in your own life as well as peace and understanding with your neighbors. It’s associated with winter and with stillness. Water is an important element of life, which allows all things to grow and thrive.

This rather rigid-looking symbol is the Chinese symbol for water. That being said, these symbols are viewed as pivotal for Confucianism. Most of these are fairly difficult to read and interpret. It’s said that Confucius always feared that if he made a particular symbol for his teachings, then his followers would follow and worship that symbol, and pay little attention to the teachings behind it.Īs a result of that, there are only a few notable Confucianism symbols we can point to today. The followers of Confucianism follow its thoughts and writings and don’t look for individual symbols to worship – at least not as much as the followers of most other religions and philosophical traditions. The main reason for that seems to be this philosophy’s intent on spelling its tenets and views plainly and literally in a written form. Despite being over two and a half millennia old and coming from a culture with a hieroglyphic language system, Confucianism doesn’t have too many symbols that are viewed as core to its philosophy.
