The word, "glyph, " is one of those words that sounds less and less meaningful the more you say it. It's like the lazy person's "higeroglyphic, " which isn't that far from the truth. One of the most iconic glyph is the New Orleans fleur de lis, which has become synonymous with Dixieland jazz, Mardi Gras and the New Orleans Saints NFL football team. The origin of the glyph goes back well before the American and National Conferences united to form the National Football League; it dates back to 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.
It becomes even clearer when you think of languages like Japanese, that use syllabaries. These are made up of little marks that on their own mean nothing but, together in a "word, " they mean something. A diacritical mark is another form of glyph. Think of the German umlaut, the two dots above a letter. Alone, they look like a sleeping colon; above a letter, they help you pronounce it.
This brings us back to the role of the fleur de lis as an icon for New Orleans. Where did it come from? What did it mean to our ancestors way back when? When did it ever mean anything other than beer, football and the Super Bowl?
The glyph that we recognize today as the flower of life came about in the early 11th century as France came out of the Dark Ages. Clovis I, the first, and almost mythical, king of the Franks, who were the nation who would become France, is reckoned to have been given a fleur directly from Heaven. Philip I, the first king of what we now know as France, adopted the symbol as 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.
The French explorer, Sieur de La Salle, came over to the United States in 1682, and claimed the Mississippi Valley on behalf of French royalty. To designate the event, he stuck a white flag with a golden fleur de lis at the mouth of the Mississippi. The glyph moves closer to the state of Louisiana and its iconic city on the Gulf of Mexico.
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.
It becomes even clearer when you think of languages like Japanese, that use syllabaries. These are made up of little marks that on their own mean nothing but, together in a "word, " they mean something. A diacritical mark is another form of glyph. Think of the German umlaut, the two dots above a letter. Alone, they look like a sleeping colon; above a letter, they help you pronounce it.
This brings us back to the role of the fleur de lis as an icon for New Orleans. Where did it come from? What did it mean to our ancestors way back when? When did it ever mean anything other than beer, football and the Super Bowl?
The glyph that we recognize today as the flower of life came about in the early 11th century as France came out of the Dark Ages. Clovis I, the first, and almost mythical, king of the Franks, who were the nation who would become France, is reckoned to have been given a fleur directly from Heaven. Philip I, the first king of what we now know as France, adopted the symbol as 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.
The French explorer, Sieur de La Salle, came over to the United States in 1682, and claimed the Mississippi Valley on behalf of French royalty. To designate the event, he stuck a white flag with a golden fleur de lis at the mouth of the Mississippi. The glyph moves closer to the state of Louisiana and its iconic city on the Gulf of Mexico.
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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