Saint John's Arms

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The ⌘ symbol as seen on a Swedish road sign (No. 1.9.2.30) for national heritage.

⌘, a square with loops at the corners, which is sometimes referred to as Saint John's Arms, the Place of Interest Sign,^[1] or Saint Hannes cross, is an ancient symbol now commonly used throughout Northern Europe.

1 Ancient use
2 Modern use
3 References
4 See also

[edit] Ancient use

The symbol appears on a number of objects in Northern Europe. It features prominently on an image stone from Hablingbo, Gotland, Sweden that was created between 400-600 AD. ^[2]

It is also similar to a traditional heraldic emblem called a Bowen knot.^[3]

The symbol decorates a 1,000-year-old, pre-Christian wooden ski that was found in Finland.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Modern use

The ⌘ symbol as seen on Rana museum, Norway.

In modern times, the symbol is commonly found in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden as an indicator of cultural locations. Unicode standards documents such as U2300 (Miscellaneous Technical, Range 2300-23FF) call it the "Place of Interest sign".

An Apple command key

The symbol later gained international recognition via computing. It was used on the Apple Macintosh's keyboard as the symbol for the command key, where it got a variety of slang names: "cloverleaf", "splat", "splodge", "butterfly", "squiggle", "beanie", "cauliflower", "propeller", "shamrock". Its Unicode code is U+2318: ⌘.

[edit] References

^ Official Unicode documentation refers to the symbol as the "the Place of Interest Sign". See official documentation: [1]
^ The picture stone may be viewed online here: [2]
^ James Parker, A Glossary of Terms Used in Heraldry (Oxford, 1894). [3] Retrieved on 2007-03-18.