World symbols

We start with commonly-known and widely-used symbols of the world. Apologies for any I may have missed which you think should be here. I am happy to include them if you about it.

Graphic symbols

Many long-standing graphic symbols are encoded in Unicode:

Unicode name
Symbol
Type
Meaning

Yin Yang

☯️

Intuitive

Yin-Yang, balance. Visually represented and derivable.

Om, Aum

🕉️

Consensus

Aum, original sound of the Universe

Wheel Of Dharma

☸️

Contextually representational

Dhamma wheel — Eight parts

Zodiac

♒♈♉♊♌♎♏♐♑

Contextually representational

Each symbol represents the idents. Some Zodiac symbols don't seem to imply their idents.

Shuffle, Repeat

🔀🔁

Contextually intuitive

In media playback: shuffle, repeat

Play, Stop, Pause

▶️⏹️⏸️

Contextually intuitive

The Play triangle shows moving forward, thus square Stop implies the movement stopping. The broken square, Pause, suggests a break in movement.

Notice that many emoji graphic publishers even use their own sub-stratum symbolism: in the emoji set on my computer (Windows 11), ideological symbols (like spiritual and religious) have a purple background, while most other generic symbols have a blue background. The generic symbols may be coloured in another way, usually pertaining to cultural projections: e.g. the male symbol ♂️ is blue, while the female symbol ♀️ is pink; and the transgender symbol ⚧️ is purple.

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