What is a glyph, apart from a strange-sounding word. Street talk for "hieroglyphic." The best known example of a glyph today is the New Orleans fleur de lis. The two symbols are synonymous, you just can't picture one without the other. American football fans recognize it immediately as the icon for the NFL football team, the New Orleans Saints. It may come as a surprise that the glyph has its roots hundreds of years ago in ancient Egypt.
Defining glyph is not easy. It is sort of a part of a typographical character with a meaning all its own. The French cedilla, for example, looks like a comma all by itself. Attach it to a letter "c" and it becomes obvious that it alters the pronunciation of the letter. By itself, nothing; attached to a letter "c" in something written in French, it's a glyph.
Take the Japanese language. It is made up of groups of written symbols, called syllabaries, that within themselves don't mean anything until they are put together with other syllabaries. Diacritics qualify for the status of glyph because they differentiate characters from each other.
So what is the FDL a glyph for, other than beer, snacks, television and, when the Saints don't make the Super Bowl, heartbreak. Apparently, an early Egyptian symbol for an asp, or snake, is believed by some to have been a prototype for the world's first "flower of life." Others say that it is an ancient Roman symbol for fidelity.
It goes back to the 11th century, when France came out of the Dark Ages. Clovis I, the first king of the civilization that was to later become the French, who had never heard of football or the Astrodome, was said to have received a fleur straight from Heaven. His eventual successor, King Philip I of what we now call France, incorporated the lovely lily into his insignia.
Later, the British tweaked it a little bit here and there and assigned it to its own Welsh Prince. Prince Charles, the current Prince of Wales, uses it in his own coat of arms. His crest bears an elegant representation of three regal white feathers threaded through a royal crown.
Now, the glyph is getting closer to home. The French explorer, Sieur de La Salle, came over and laid claim to the Mississippi valley, albeit temporarily, as French territory. In the process, he stuck a flag at the mouth of the river of the same name. The flag bore a fleur de lis. The banner that he used consisted of a patch of white cloth bearing a golden flower of life.
French settlers migrated from Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. The glyph came home. It has represented the Big Easy in art, cinema, architecture, jewelry and football mugs. There is no single, right fleur de lis. Over the centuries, it has adopted hundreds of different colors and styles.
Defining glyph is not easy. It is sort of a part of a typographical character with a meaning all its own. The French cedilla, for example, looks like a comma all by itself. Attach it to a letter "c" and it becomes obvious that it alters the pronunciation of the letter. By itself, nothing; attached to a letter "c" in something written in French, it's a glyph.
Take the Japanese language. It is made up of groups of written symbols, called syllabaries, that within themselves don't mean anything until they are put together with other syllabaries. Diacritics qualify for the status of glyph because they differentiate characters from each other.
So what is the FDL a glyph for, other than beer, snacks, television and, when the Saints don't make the Super Bowl, heartbreak. Apparently, an early Egyptian symbol for an asp, or snake, is believed by some to have been a prototype for the world's first "flower of life." Others say that it is an ancient Roman symbol for fidelity.
It goes back to the 11th century, when France came out of the Dark Ages. Clovis I, the first king of the civilization that was to later become the French, who had never heard of football or the Astrodome, was said to have received a fleur straight from Heaven. His eventual successor, King Philip I of what we now call France, incorporated the lovely lily into his insignia.
Later, the British tweaked it a little bit here and there and assigned it to its own Welsh Prince. Prince Charles, the current Prince of Wales, uses it in his own coat of arms. His crest bears an elegant representation of three regal white feathers threaded through a royal crown.
Now, the glyph is getting closer to home. The French explorer, Sieur de La Salle, came over and laid claim to the Mississippi valley, albeit temporarily, as French territory. In the process, he stuck a flag at the mouth of the river of the same name. The flag bore a fleur de lis. The banner that he used consisted of a patch of white cloth bearing a golden flower of life.
French settlers migrated from Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. The glyph came home. It has represented the Big Easy in art, cinema, architecture, jewelry and football mugs. There is no single, right fleur de lis. Over the centuries, it has adopted hundreds of different colors and styles.
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