Swastika

:For the town in Ontario, see Swastika, Ontario.

Etymology and alternative names

The word swastika is derived from the Sanskrit ????????, svastika, meaning any lucky or auspicious object, and in particular a mark made on persons and things to denote good luck. It is composed of su- (cognate with Greek ??-), meaning "good, well" and asti a verbal abstract to the root as "to be"; svasti thus means "well-being". The suffix -ka forms a diminutive, and svastika might thus be translated literally as "little thing associated with well-being", corresponding roughly to "lucky charm", or "thing that is auspicious".{{ref|northvegr.org}} The suffix -tika also literally means mark; therefore a sometimes alternate name for swastika in India is shubhtika (literally good mark). The word first appears in the Classical Sanskrit (in the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics).

Related Topics:
Sanskrit - Greek - Ramayana - Mahabharata

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Alternative historical English spellings of the Sanskrit word include suastika and svastica. Alternative names for the shape are:

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• Black Spider, to various peoples in middle and western Europe.
• crooked cross
• cross cramponned, ~nnée, or ~nny (in heraldry), as each arm resembles a crampon or angle-iron. (Compare Winkelmaßkreuz in German.)
• cross gammadion, tetragammadion or just gammadion, as each arm resembles the Greek letter ? (gamma). (Compare croiz gammée in Old French and croix gammée in French; cruz gamada in Spanish.)
• fylfot (meaning "four feet", chiefly in heraldry and architecture). (See Fylfot for a discussion of the etymology.)
• hooked cross, (Dutch: hakenkruis,Serbian: kukasti krst, Icelandic: Hakakross German: Hakenkreuz, Finnish: hakaristi, Norwegian: Hakekors Italian: croce uncinata Romanian: Cruce încârligat? and Swedish: Hakkors, Danish: Hagekors)
• sun wheel (German Sonnenrad), a name also used as a synonym for the sun cross.
• tetraskelion, Greek "four legged", especially when composed of four conjoined legs (compare triskelion).
• Thor's hammer, from its supposed association with Thor, the Norse god of thunder, but this may be a misappropriation of a name that properly belongs to a Y-shaped or T-shaped symbol. (See Thomas Wilson, below.) - The Swastika shape appears in Icelandic grimoires where in it is named Þórshamar
• thunder cross (Latvian: perkonkrusts)