Symbols of Love: The Heart's Meaning, History, and Jewelry

I have made more hearts than any other symbol in my career, and I have never once made two that meant the same thing.

One was for a new mother. One marked the end of a marriage and the beginning of a life. One was bought by a woman for herself, on an ordinary Tuesday, for no occasion other than deciding she was worth it. The shape stays constant. The love it carries never does.

That range is why the heart sits at the center of my Love & Compassion collection, and it is why I wanted to write down what the symbols of love actually mean: where the heart shape truly comes from, what the Sacred Heart holds, and which other emblems around the world carry devotion in their own dialects.

The Heart: The World's Symbol of Love

Where the heart shape comes from

The scalloped heart we all draw looks nothing like the anatomical organ, and its origin is genuinely debated, which I find charming rather than troubling.

One theory reaches back to the ancient city of Cyrene, whose wealth was built on a plant called silphium. Its seed pod was shaped like the heart symbol we know, and the city stamped that shape on its coins. Another lineage, the better documented one, runs through medieval Europe. By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, painters and manuscript illuminators had settled on the scalloped heart as the image of romantic love, often shown being offered from one hand to another. From there it spread everywhere a symbol can go: playing cards, heraldry, love letters, and of course jewelry.

By the Victorian era, the heart was the beating center of sentimental jewelry, in lockets holding portraits and hair, in padlock clasps on bracelets, in the witch's heart brooches pinned for protection of a love. Very few symbols survive seven centuries of constant use with their meaning intact. The heart has.

The heart across cultures

What makes the heart nearly universal is that so many traditions located love in the same place. Ancient Egyptian belief treated the heart as the seat of the soul and the part of a person weighed in the afterlife. Classical writers placed emotion and conscience in the chest. Sacred traditions from Europe to South Asia speak of the heart as the room where the divine visits.

So when a woman touches a heart pendant at her collarbone, she is repeating a very old gesture: pointing to the place where love is believed to live.

The Sacred Heart meaning

The Sacred Heart is the heart at its most powerful: a heart depicted aflame, sometimes crowned with thorns or radiating light, representing boundless, compassionate love that endures through suffering. It rose to prominence in seventeenth-century Catholic devotion and has since traveled far beyond the church wall, into folk art, tattoo tradition, and jewelry.

I return to the Sacred Heart often because it refuses to make love look easy. It is love with its cost showing, and there is something deeply honest about wearing that. My Lapis and Aquamarine Sacred Heart pendant sets that old fire in cool blue stone, which is exactly the tension I wanted: ardor, carried calmly.

Symbols of Love Around the World

The heart may be the mother tongue, but love has many dialects. These are the ones I find myself returning to.

The rose

Sacred to Aphrodite in Greece and Venus in Rome, the rose has meant romantic love for well over two thousand years. Its shorthand is precise: beauty guarded by thorns, devotion that must be handled with care. A red rose declares; a pink one adores; a white one promises.

The swan

Swans glide through love symbolism because of how they live: they form long, often lifelong pair bonds, and two swans facing each other curve their necks into the shape of a heart. They stand for fidelity, grace, and love that chooses the same person again every day.

The Claddagh

Ireland's gift to the language of love: two hands holding a crowned heart, for friendship, loyalty, and love together in one design. The way it is worn tells the story, turned one way for a heart that is open, the other for a heart already given.

The love knot

A line with no beginning and no end, looped into itself. Knot motifs appear in Celtic, Norse, and sailors' traditions as promises made permanent, love that cannot be untied. It is the quietest of the love symbols, and often the most binding.

Compassion: Love Turned Outward

I named the collection Love & Compassion rather than love alone, and the second word is not decoration.

Love, as we usually mean it, is directed at particular people: a partner, a child, a friend, a name. Compassion is what love becomes when it opens outward, the capacity to feel with people beyond your own circle, and, hardest of all, to extend that same gentleness to yourself. The heart holds both meanings, which is why heart jewelry is bought as often for kindness, empathy, and self-acceptance as it is for romance.

Some of the most moving pieces I have ever made were hearts a woman bought for herself. Not as consolation. As commitment.

Heart Jewelry: Meaning You Can Wear

A heart in gold does something a heart on paper cannot: it stays. It goes where you go, warms to your skin, and outlasts the moment that occasioned it.

Stone choice lets you tune the meaning. Rose quartz and pink rhodochrosite are the classic stones of tenderness and self-love, lapis lazuli brings depth and truth, and black onyx grounds a heart in steadiness. The GIA gem encyclopedia is a lovely rabbit hole on the stones themselves; tradition supplies the rest.

And because language should occasionally be taken literally, I did make a Heart of Gold necklace. It is exactly what it sounds like, and it tends to find the women it describes.

Love sits beside the other meanings I design around, protection, abundance, clarity, and they trade well. A heart layered with an abundance piece reads as a life being built with love rather than just toward success. If that wider language interests you, my Symbolic Jewelry Guide maps all six families, and my guide to abundance symbols tells the story of the builder's side.

How to Choose a Symbol of Love

Start with who the love is for. Romantic love tends toward the classic heart or the Claddagh. Love for a child or mother often wants something wearable daily and close, a small heart pendant at the collarbone. Remembrance asks for weight and permanence, gold above all. Self-love, the most overdue purchase in jewelry, tends to choose soft stones: rose quartz, pink opal, rhodochrosite.

Then let the piece be worn, not saved. A love symbol kept in a drawer is a sentiment. Worn daily, it becomes a practice, a small recurring vote for leading with the heart.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most recognized symbol of love?

The heart is the most recognized symbol of love in the world. Its scalloped shape has represented romantic and spiritual love in Western art since at least the Middle Ages and is now understood across nearly every culture. Other widely recognized symbols of love include the rose, the swan, the Claddagh, and the love knot, each emphasizing a different aspect of devotion.

Where does the heart shape come from?

The origin of the heart shape is debated. One theory traces it to the seed pod of silphium, a plant so valued in the ancient city of Cyrene that its heart-shaped seed appeared on the city's coins. The better documented lineage runs through medieval European art, where the scalloped heart became the standard image of romantic love by the fourteenth century and spread through playing cards, manuscripts, and jewelry.

What does the Sacred Heart mean?

The Sacred Heart is a devotional image of a heart, often depicted with flames, a crown of thorns, or radiating light, that represents boundless, compassionate love. It rose to prominence in seventeenth-century Catholic devotion and has since become a broader emblem of love that endures through suffering. In jewelry, the Sacred Heart is worn both as an expression of faith and as a symbol of profound, protective love.

What does a heart necklace symbolize?

A heart necklace symbolizes love in the form the wearer gives it: romantic love, love for family or a child, remembrance of someone gone, or self-love. Worn near the chest, it is one of the most personal placements in jewelry. Many women choose a heart necklace to mark a relationship or milestone, while others wear one as a daily reminder to lead with the heart.

What is the difference between love and compassion?

Love usually describes a bond directed toward particular people: a partner, a child, a friend. Compassion is love turned outward, the capacity to feel with others and to wish them well beyond personal attachment. In symbolic terms, the heart holds both meanings, which is why heart jewelry is chosen as often for kindness, empathy, and self-acceptance as for romance.

Conclusion

Seven centuries of constant use, and the heart has never worn out. That is the mark of a true symbol: it does not run down with repetition, it accumulates.

Whichever symbol of love you choose, the heart, the rose, the knot, the crowned heart in two hands, choose it for a love you can name, and then wear it often enough that it becomes part of how you carry that love. The shape is ancient. The meaning, every single time, is yours.