Peace symbols and what they mean

There is no single symbol. The best known worldwide are the white dove and the sign in the circle with its three lines. The German Patent and Trade Mark Office counts this sign among the few symbols that are known all over the world and understood everywhere.

Which sign someone chooses depends on the occasion and on the tradition they come from. The dove and the olive branch come from the Bible, the sign in the circle and the rainbow flag from peace marches, the olive branches of the United Nations from the emblem of an organisation. On this page you will find all six signs in the series with their origins.

Since 1958 the sign in the circle has belonged to the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, whose march to Aldermaston, according to the German Patent and Trade Mark Office, started the tradition of Easter marches. The rainbow flag with the word PACE comes from the Italian movement for nonviolence.

In 1949 Picasso’s dove was the poster of the World Peace Congress in Paris. In East Germany the independent peace movement wore the patch “Swords into Ploughshares” from 1980. Each movement has its sign, and many of them were later taken up by others.

The vertical line runs through the middle of the circle, and the two slanted lines branch off from the centre downwards. That is how Gerald Holtom drew it in 1958, and it fits his explanation: the arms pointing down form the letter N in semaphore.

A version with the lines pointing up is not one of Holtom’s variants. According to the German Patent and Trade Mark Office, the claim that it is a “death rune” comes from the Nazi era and has nothing to do with the design.

The international character set Unicode lists several of them under their own names: the sign in the circle as U+262E PEACE SYMBOL, the dove as U+1F54A DOVE OF PEACE, the two-finger gesture as U+270C VICTORY HAND and the white flag as U+1F3F3 WAVING WHITE FLAG.

What these characters look like depends on the font and the device that displays them. The same character is meant everywhere, even if the dove is drawn differently on one phone than on another.

For the sign in the circle, yes. Gerald Holtom deliberately chose not to protect it, and the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament writes that no one has to pay or ask permission. The dove, the olive branch and the rainbow flag are old motifs without an owner.

The patch “Swords into Ploughshares” in its East German design is different. According to the Ecumenical Peace Decade, in 2006 it asked the Aktionsgemeinschaft Dienst für den Frieden to protect this motif so that it is used mainly in peace work. With the pipe the question is less about rights than about respect for a sacred object.

An image becomes a sign when many people use it in the same meaning for long enough. The dove was first part of a story, the sign in the circle first the logo of a campaign. Only through repetition on posters, flags and badges did they become signs that are understood without explanation.

That is also why the meaning can shift. The same sign can stand for a particular movement in one country and for peace in general in another, and it can be used by groups its creators never had in mind.