I need to know what this symbol is. I can not find it anywhere. I know that is on no flags. It is not a Maya hieroglyph. Its not on any coat of arms that I have ever seen. Its not a part of UK heraldry. I can not figure it out. Please help me?

The closest symbol I could find is "Buki" from the Glagolitic alphabet. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Categ ... ic_letters

http://cu.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%94%D1% ... a_Buki.svg

I transformed your image into this:

And then used Google's visually similar image searching feature. Unfortunately the Google image matching doesn't expose enough dials / knobs about image feature extraction and feature weights to make it as useful as it could be.


EDIT: I found a Unicode character recognition service: http://shapecatcher.com/

I drew all four rotations of the symbol but no Unicode characters in that service's database are a good match. It is missing Korean, Japanese, and Chinese though.

Isn't it just the number 41, underlined and on its side? Or maybe a contraction of ITh?

Looks like a Celtic-esque pattern surrounding the symbol. Based on the photo URL containing 'bnjpearl', maybe came from here http://myworld.ebay.com/bnjpearl/
$0.99

I recreated the symbol in Illustrator.

The closest thing I found is the logo for the Untamed Youth: https://twitter.com/UntamedYouthSA

Google also found the Buki symbol mentioned above and this fairly close logo: http://www.pugshop.net/images/ind_03.jpg

I went as far as recreating the entire symbol, but Google can't find anything close.

Attached is the final version. By the way, I also tried all four rotations.

Skarabajo

I tried this but all of the Celtic symbols I could find are based on curves. The symbol looks more like Sanskrit-esque to me:


The Swastika is from Sanskrit as well.

I've also tried searching fertility, good luck, and astrological symbols without much luck.

I couldn't find any similar symbol using the graphic index on the symbols dot com website: http://www.symbols.com/section/6/category/15/

Shua, you should take pictures of the sides of the ring; maybe there is a hint in there.

Skarabajo.

This symbol contains some of the elements of both the weave on the outside and the symbol on the inside:

It's a Swastika variant.

Here is the only other angle I could find:

Shua,

The ring is upside-down in the above pictures.

It turns out that this is a stylized version of the Arabic word علی (Ali) in Kufic script style.

Form of letters in Kufic script style:
http://www.kufic.info/kuficscript.htm

The same word in black tiles in Qazvin, Iran:
http://cache.virtualtourist.com/4/40612 ... Qazvin.jpg

Example of a quadrupled square Kufic with the same word:
http://www.deplu.go.id/damascus/Picture/_w/Ali_jpg.jpg

Other examples including two versions of the word Ali, notice the star made of two squares (scroll down) which also appears on the ring in curved form:
http://www.kufic.info/othermediums/vanda/vanda.htm

Examples in Wikimedia Commons, including "Ali":
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Categ ... yles/Kufic

Other complex examples, some include the star made of two squares:
https://www.google.com/search?q=kufic+s ... e&tbm=isch

I find it peculiar that the ring is available on eBay as "Vintage Heavy Biker Black Silver Mens Stainless Steel Square Symbol Ring". I wonder how many bikers aren't aware that they are wearing a ring with the name of a 7th century Islamic leader (cousin of the Prophet Muhammad).

Skarabajo.

Pretty cool! The top left corner did remind me of an initial letter ghayn, but I would never have recognized other two letters. Kufic is nuts.

Ah, the power of the community!

Skarabajo, I am more interested in how you found this: Were you already familiar with kufic, or this symbol in particular? Did you ask somebody who recognized it? Did you do some kind of clever targeted search on the internet? Find it by accident by trawling through images? Or just post the question somewhere else on the internet?

Kelvin,

I was not familiar with square Kufic script or this symbol in particular. I didn't ask anybody or posted anywhere else. So, I guess you can call it "clever targeted search".

Here's how I found it...

As you can see (by looking at the names of my attached files above), I tried several versions. At one point I had a version with rounded corners, thinking that maybe this would help Google Images find alternative versions of the same symbol/word. It did. You can see that particular version below (before I realized it needed to be rotated 180°).

When using this version, Google Images finds the quadrupled square Kufic (third link in my previous post). You can try it yourself by downloading it or by using the Google Image extension.

Since that particular result wasn't enough. I created a bigger version of that quadrupled square Kufic and searched again. Google Images found more results (including the fourth link on my previous post). So I learned about square Kufic script (see the first link on my previous post), and then I simply searched for "kufic ali" without quotes and found the second and fifth links on my previous post. The last link on my previous post is a simple query for "kufic script square" without quotes.

It was a nice challenge and I'm happy to have solved it.

Skarabajo.

Brilliant!

A similar problem here, can anyone read the letters on this spoon?

There's "КАВКАЗЪ" written there, that means "the Caucasus" in Russian.

Wow thanks, that was a fast reply !

I also recognized the Russian letters, pronounced "kavkass", right?

Yes, something like that. V is soft and sounds more like F.

Thank you so much Skarabajo!
I was never going to find that.