Peace Symbol Origins

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, is this Martha?

This is Martha. Who’s this?

This is David Helms from Huntsville, Alabama.

Hi, David.

Welcome to the show.

Hey, well, I have a question about the peace symbol.

I was thinking about it.

I’ve heard some numerous different orientations of the original meaning of it.

I’ve signed it for years in my name.

I put a little peace symbol in my name, and I just love it.

-huh. You dot your I with a P symbol in David?

No, actually, I put it in the swoop of my D.

Oh, really?

Oh, that’s super cool.

I have a little P symbol in there, yeah.

And how did you get attached to it?

Oh, it’s just, you know, it’s a piece, and I love that.

That’s a great concept, and, you know, it’d be nice, you know, that’s a good thing.

Yeah, this is the circle with the line going down the middle

And then two lines coming off at angles toward the bottom of the…

Right, right, yeah.

Yeah, I had one of those when I was growing up that I wore a lot around my neck.

And I was always told that it was the image of a dove’s foot.

Oh, really?

Yeah, like a dove footprint.

But I don’t think that’s the real story.

Interesting.

I’ve heard no nukes or anti-atomic, which is also an interesting thought.

But I don’t know what the origin is or where does it go back to?

Is it ancient, or is it something that was just developed in the 60s?

Earlier than that.

Yeah, earlier than that.

There’s a book I would recommend.

Really?

Yeah, there’s a book I would recommend to start this off,

Which in my opinion does a really good job summarizing what we know about the peace symbol,

Especially its early days.

And it’s called Peace, the Biography of a Symbol, and it’s by Ken Kolsbun, K-O-L-S-B-U-N.

So Peace, the Biography of a Symbol, and it’s published by National Geographic.

And it’s a small book, but it does a good job of summarizing these.

There are versions of the symbol as early as the 1930s, but it wasn’t until the 1950s in the UK when a textile designer of no great reputation,

But for some reason he became the guy, used it in an anti-nuke march.

And his name is Gerald Holton, H-O-L-T-O-M.

And from there, the symbol kind of caught on in the anti-nuclear movement.

And then later became, by the mid-1960s, became very generalized just to mean peace in general.

But because its early use was anti-nuke, it doesn’t mean that it only ever means anti-nuke.

It still means it has its new meaning, and that’s the meaning that we all know it by.

It’s just a pro-peace symbol.

Yeah, so it was associated with the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, I think.

Yeah, and there are some myths out there that the symbol is a combination of the letters C, N, and D,

Or that it’s a combination of runes from the old runic writing system.

There’s maybe some truth to these, but there’s not a lot of evidence to prove it,

Because the shapes are so basic that you can pretty much find just about any symbol in this symbol that you wanted to look for.

That’s fascinating. It goes back to the 30s.

Yeah, versions of it that are similar.

There was a movie, though, in 1961 called The Day the Earth Caught Fire,

And it was a film about the effects of nuclear testing,

And that was the film that really introduced it, certainly in the counterculture movement, the symbol.

It became directly associated.

And that’s kind of when it also made the leap from just not only anti-nuke, but to anti-war.

I got you.

Okay.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

But again, David, I recommend that book.

Look it up.

See if you can find it in your library.

Peace, the biography of a symbol by Ken Colesbun.

K-O-L-S-B-U-N.

Okay, Grant.

That sounds great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, David.

Really appreciate it.

Good talking with you.

All right.

I appreciate you folks.

Thank you.

Enjoy the show.

All right.

Bye, David.

Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673, or send it an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.