Heart

Also called ♥, card suit

The playing-card suit is fifteenth-century; the valentine is later

Heart meaning

The heart symbol ♥ is the playing-card heart, a fifteenth-century French suit, later the valentine. It is not a drawing of the anatomical heart. Sacred Heart devotion in Catholic art is a wounded organ, a different picture, even when both are called hearts.

♥U+2665

A suit of cards that became the picture of love. Not a diagram of the organ.

Where it comes from

French playing cards settled on cœurs, hearts, as one of four suits. Where the scalloped shape comes from — ivy, a leaf suit, a simplified organ — is debated, and a single origin story would be cleaner than the evidence. What is clear is the sequence: a card suit, then a sentimental emblem, then an emoji. Catholic Sacred Heart imagery, from early modern devotion, shows a heart with flames or a wound. It depicts the organ on purpose. The suit symbol does not. Love is the meaning the suit acquired, not the meaning of every heart-shaped thing.

Modern

Love, after the card table

Once the shape leaves the deck it means affection, and it means it loudly. That use is real and young relative to the rest of this cabinet. A public restroom and a valentine and a card deck are three contexts. The shape is doing different work in each, with the deck as the ancestor of the emoji.

Christian

The Sacred Heart is another drawing

If there is fire, a wound, or a cross coming out of the top, you are in devotional art. If the shape is symmetric and empty, you are in the suit. Mixing them makes both shallower.

Near this

Sources

French playing-card suit of cœurs, fifteenth century
Sacred Heart devotion, a separate iconography

Named when the entry depends on a text, a date, or a standard. Catalog numbers are not invented.

Your margin

Private. It stays in this browser and never joins the canon.

symbol.wiki, edited as Sigilla. Last reviewed 2 October 2026. A reading of public tradition, not a ruling.