Wedding and Engagement Ring Trivia!
Let’s have some fun today with a bit of useless trivia! How many answers do you know? How many people do you think you can stump around the water cooler? Want to seem like the proverbial ’brainiac’ of the office and need more material? Well read on, smarty-pants!
Q: What is the most common explanation associated for the reason behind engagement/wedding rings being worn of the third digit of the left hand?
A: Many ancient cultures believed that the left middle finger contained the “vein of love”, which ran from the left ‘ring’ finger directly to the heart. Thus expressions of love such as rings were worn on said finger.
Q: From where do we get the word “diamond”?
A: According to philologists (people who study the history of words) the word diamond comes from the Ancient Greek term ”adamant”, which meant steady, eternal or indestructible.
Q: How did the word “betrothed” come into existence?
A: Again, philology tells us the modern word “betrothed” comes from the old Anglo-Saxon word “troweth”, a word associated with truth and loyalty. To be” betrothed” in Middle English meant to have had taken an oath or sworn fidelity to another. Nowadays, to be betrothed means having vows of eternal loyalty at a wedding ceremony.
Q: Is there a difference between being ‘wed’ and being ’betrothed’?
A: Interesting tid-bit here… In its modern usage, to be ‘wed’ is to be declared married by secular institution, while to be ‘betrothed’ is to be declared married by a religious entity.
Q: What was the smallest engagement ring know to have been offered?
A: The smallest engagement ring known in history was given to the two year old Princess Mary, daughter to the infamous King Henry VIII of England’s House of Tudor. She had been betrothed by her parents by-proxy to another infant, Prince Dauphin of France. The ring was specially made to fit her tiny finger!
Q: What is a “princess engagement ring”, and how does it differ from a regular engagement ring?
A: A princess engagement ring was an early English design that consisted of three to five diamonds arranged in a row across the top of the ring. Though no current differences exist between the two terms, in pre-Magna Carta England there existed laws stating that only royalty or church officials could possess rings consisting of multiple stones!
Q: From where and when did the custom of a ‘wedding band’ on top of a ‘betrothal ring’ (engagement ring) originate?
A: No one can really say, as the concept of gifting two rings (one before and another after a wedding) is a rather recent phenomenon of current prevailing Western cultural ideals which some researches have noted seems to have sprung up quite organically across the globe some 100 or so years ago.
Tags: history, Wedding Bands, wedding ring trivia