On which hand and finger is the wedding ring worn?

Wed­ding rings are a unique sym­bol of pas­sion­ate love, fideli­ty, mutu­al respect, inex­tri­ca­ble con­nec­tion and the desire to spend your whole life togeth­er, to be one whole always and every­where.

The mean­ing of wom­en’s and men’s wed­ding rings on the fin­gers, the cus­toms of wear­ing them in Ukraine and oth­er coun­tries of the world will be dis­cussed in this arti­cle.

Where and how did the tradition of wearing a wedding ring originate?

Even 6,000 years ago in ancient Egypt, dur­ing a wed­ding, the bride and groom exchanged rings made of sug­ar cane, wood, ani­mal skin, hemp leaves as a sign of a fam­i­ly union. The cus­tom became pop­u­lar in ancient Rome, Greece and India. Regard­less of the mate­r­i­al of man­u­fac­ture, the rings invari­ably sym­bol­ize the same val­ues ​​— love, loy­al­ty and dura­bil­i­ty.

Ini­tial­ly, only engaged or mar­ried women could wear the ring. It served as a gift that a man gave to his bride. For the girl, it was a sym­bol of the trust and affec­tion that the guy had for her, and for those around her, it was a sign that she was already busy.

In ancient times, engage­ment rings were con­sid­ered a pow­er­ful amulet that reli­ably guard­ed fam­i­ly hap­pi­ness, pro­tect­ing a hus­band and wife from var­i­ous trou­bles.

The round shape of the ring was also not cho­sen by chance. The cir­cle was a sym­bol of love, which has nei­ther begin­ning nor end.

Thus, a tra­di­tion was born that has sur­vived to this day unchanged. This is an impor­tant sym­bol of mar­riage, a sign of love and fideli­ty, which deter­mines mar­i­tal sta­tus.

In the 9th cen­tu­ry, thanks to Pope Nicholas I, wed­ding rings became part of the church cer­e­mo­ny. By deci­sion of the Pope, a new law was intro­duced, accord­ing to which putting a wed­ding ring on the fin­ger of a loved one dur­ing a church cer­e­mo­ny sym­bol­ized the desire to cre­ate a strong fam­i­ly.

On which hand in different countries of the world should a wedding ring be worn?

Dif­fer­ent cus­toms of which fin­ger and which hand wear wed­ding rings in dif­fer­ent coun­tries of the world are asso­ci­at­ed with ancient beliefs, the his­to­ry of indi­vid­ual coun­tries and reli­gion. On the right hand are worn in:

• Aus­tria,

• Bul­gar­ia,

• Mace­do­nia,

• chile,

• Den­mark,

• Geor­gia,

• Greece,

• Lithua­nia

• India,

• Ger­many,

• Hun­gary,

• Nor­way,

• Bel­gium,

• Poland,

• Venezuela,

• Colom­bia,

• to Cuba,

In Euro­pean coun­tries, the tra­di­tion of wear­ing wed­ding jew­el­ry on the right hand is jus­ti­fied by his­to­ry. Before the Jan­u­ary Upris­ing, cou­ples wore them on the left hand. Only wid­ows wore on the right. After the defeat of the upris­ing, mar­ried women put on their wed­ding jew­el­ry on their right hands as a sign of mourn­ing. The cus­tom has sur­vived to this day.

The wed­ding ring is worn on the left hand in:

• brazil,

• aus­tralia,

• Czech Repub­lic,

• boot­ing,

• Egypt,

• Japan,

• new zealand,

• France,

• iran,

• ire­land,

• Cana­da,

• mex­i­co,

• Slo­va­kia,

• Croa­t­ia,

• Roma­nia,

• Slove­nia,

• Turkey,

• USA,

• Great Britain,

• Italy.

• Spain — both in Valen­cia and in Cat­alo­nia.

Dur­ing the Jew­ish wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny, the groom puts the bride’s wed­ding ring on the index fin­ger of his right hand, and imme­di­ate­ly after the wed­ding — on the ring fin­ger on his left hand. It should not look too expen­sive or too spec­tac­u­lar, but mod­est and imper­cep­ti­ble, so that thanks to it the spous­es become equal. Thus, pos­si­ble dis­pro­por­tions in the prop­er­ty of the bride and groom are elim­i­nat­ed.

On which hand do men wear a wedding ring?

Men began dec­o­rat­ing their hands with rings much ear­li­er than women. But for them, these dec­o­ra­tions on the lit­tle fin­ger or on the thumb were a sign of wealth and pow­er, they had noth­ing to do with mar­riage, cre­at­ing and strength­en­ing a fam­i­ly.

In most Mus­lim coun­tries, with the excep­tion of Iran and Jor­dan, the exchange of wed­ding rings is not part of the wed­ding tra­di­tion. In these states, spous­es sim­ply wear wed­ding rings. Men are on the right hand and women are on the left. A sim­i­lar prac­tice is in place in India.

Mus­lim men do not wear gold items. Due to the reli­gious stan­dards in place in these coun­tries, only sil­ver jew­el­ry is allowed. In the Mus­lim reli­gion, gold used to be con­sid­ered a har­bin­ger of great trou­ble.

Men in some Asian coun­tries began to wear gold wed­ding rings only at the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

In Lebanon, Turkey, Roma­nia, Syr­ia and Brazil, the place for a man’s wed­ding ring is on the ring fin­ger of the right hand until the wed­ding day. Then it is put on the ring fin­ger of the left hand.

Not all rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the stronger sex like it when the ring is on the ring fin­ger. Some­times it can inter­fere with work. Anoth­er rea­son is size. Like women, men trans­fer a ring that is too small or too large to the oth­er fin­ger to avoid dis­com­fort or loss of jew­el­ry.

On which hand is a wedding ring worn in Ukraine?

Here the Chris­t­ian faith plays an impor­tant role, because in Ukraine its fol­low­ers make up more than 90% of all believ­ers. The his­to­ry of this reli­gion sug­gests that the cus­tom “on which hand girls and women should wear wed­ding rings” was ini­ti­at­ed by the church itself.

The priest, read­ing the verse from the mar­riage vow: “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spir­it,” laid the wed­ding rings on the right hands of the bride and groom. When he said “Amen”, the bride and groom put rings on the ring fin­gers of their right hands. Only after that the mar­riage was con­sid­ered con­clud­ed.

An inter­est­ing inter­pre­ta­tion of the answer to the ques­tion “on which hand should I wear a wed­ding ring?” give cul­tur­ol­o­gists. They believe that attrib­ut­es sym­bol­iz­ing feel­ings are worn on the left hand, and priv­i­leges and pow­er are worn on the right. Since mar­riage is a legal­ly per­mit­ted rela­tion­ship that gives spous­es cer­tain priv­i­leges and respon­si­bil­i­ties, wed­ding rings must be worn on the right hand.

In Ortho­doxy, the right side of the human body is respon­si­ble for wealth and pros­per­i­ty. With the right hand, those who pro­fess Chris­tian­i­ty greet each oth­er and obscure the sign of the cross.

How­ev­er, today dur­ing the wed­ding, the priest does not put wed­ding rings direct­ly on his hands. After the first part of the mar­riage vow, when the new­ly­weds swear love, fideli­ty and mar­i­tal hon­esty, he bless­es them, the mar­riage is sealed with wed­ding rings.

In Catholi­cism, this sym­bol­ic dec­o­ra­tion is reserved for the ring fin­ger of the left hand. This is due to the fact that the ring fin­ger of the left hand is usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the heart locat­ed on the same side. Catholics often wear two of these acces­sories on their left arm, one sym­bol­iz­ing engage­ment and the oth­er sym­bol­iz­ing mar­riage.

Chris­t­ian Arme­ni­ans also wear these sym­bol­ic acces­sories on their left hand, explain­ing that the ener­gy of love flows through this hand, sup­port­ing the fam­i­ly in dif­fi­cult times. This tra­di­tion is sup­port­ed by Cubans, Mex­i­cans, French, Turks, Japan­ese, Cana­di­ans and res­i­dents of South African republics.

On which finger are wedding rings worn?

Like the name of the ring fin­ger itself, the cus­tom of wear­ing wed­ding rings comes from ancient Egypt. It was believed that it was from this fin­ger that the vein leads direct­ly to the heart. Since it was called Vena Amor­is — the vein of love, the cou­ple began to wear wed­ding rings on the ring fin­ger on their wed­ding day.

A beau­ti­ful tra­di­tion has sur­vived to this day. There is no con­sen­sus in the world about which (left or right) hand a wed­ding ring is put on, but the ring fin­ger, regard­less of coun­try, faith or his­to­ry, remains the same always and every­where. It sym­bol­izes the pro­vi­sion of pros­per­i­ty, strength and eter­nal love to mar­riage rela­tion­ships.

On which hand is it customary to wear a wedding and engagement ring?

To a large extent, this will depend on the pref­er­ences of the woman, the desire to show both jew­el­ry, their size and styl­is­tic deci­sion.

In Ukraine, there are three cus­toms regard­ing which hand a wed­ding ring is worn on:

1. togeth­er — on one hand and on one fin­ger, that is, in a set that empha­sizes the depen­dence of one ring on anoth­er. How­ev­er, in this case, the wed­ding and engage­ment rings must match each oth­er in shape and style;

2. sep­a­rate­ly — on one hand, but on dif­fer­ent fin­gers. This option, where you can wear wed­ding rings, is suit­able for those women who want both prod­ucts to be side by side, but each has its own place. In such a sit­u­a­tion, the wed­ding ring goes to the mid­dle fin­ger, and the engage­ment ring goes to the ring fin­ger. But you should con­sid­er the size and shape of the fin­gers;

3. on dif­fer­ent hands. If a woman does not want the engage­ment ring and engage­ment ring to com­pete with each oth­er, it is nec­es­sary to put them on the ring fin­gers of dif­fer­ent hands. Then each dec­o­ra­tion will be able to shine in all its glo­ry and there will be no need to change its size.

Why do not many people wear a wedding ring on their right hand after a divorce?

Most divorced peo­ple stop wear­ing wed­ding rings. Many mar­ried cou­ples decide to remove their wed­ding jew­el­ry at the stage of break­ing up the rela­tion­ship, even before the divorce. No won­der: if they are a sym­bol of a cer­tain mar­riage, when it breaks up, the sym­bol los­es its pow­er.

As for which hand a woman wears a wed­ding ring after a divorce, some peo­ple trans­fer the jew­el­ry from their right hand to their left. Many even take it off and hide it in a gift box or jew­el­ry box, sell it, melt it down, or pass it on to the child who was the fruit of this union.

Where do widows or widowers wear wedding rings?

Both in Europe and in Ukraine, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of wear­ing a wed­ding ring on the ring fin­ger of the left hand usu­al­ly indi­cates the death of a spouse. If a woman or a man still wants to always have with him a sym­bol of his feel­ings for his late hus­band or dead wife, they trans­fer the ring from the right to the left hand.

Signs of fate asso­ci­at­ed with wed­ding rings

Many dif­fer­ent super­sti­tions are often asso­ci­at­ed with these acces­sories, on the basis of which many are try­ing to find out if the new­ly­weds expect a warm, trust­ing and har­mo­nious rela­tion­ship in the future.

In Poland, there is a com­mon sign that explains why wed­ding rings are worn on the ring fin­ger of the right hand. It is believed: if the jew­el­ry is trans­ferred to the left hand, the mar­riage will soon fall apart or the part­ner will be lost. In North Amer­i­can coun­tries, this is an omen of the end of love in mar­riage.

The most com­mon folk signs com­mon to many coun­tries:

• par­ents of the bride and groom are not rec­om­mend­ed to hand over wed­ding rings if their mar­riage has bro­ken up. It is believed that this type of jew­el­ry is able to col­lect and store infor­ma­tion about the ener­gy of pre­vi­ous own­ers;

• giv­ing such jew­el­ry to oth­er peo­ple is a neg­a­tive sign. But allow­ing an unmar­ried girl to touch this acces­so­ry is a favor­able sign. This is a way to “share” the state of a young fam­i­ly and endow it with pos­i­tive ener­gy;

• both rings must be cho­sen and pur­chased by the groom. Both prod­ucts must be pur­chased on the same day and in the same store. The cou­ple can togeth­er choose the appro­pri­ate option, but in any case, the man will have to pay for such an acqui­si­tion him­self;

• these acces­sories should not be pur­chased in a neg­a­tive mood and in a hur­ry. In this case, it is rec­om­mend­ed to post­pone the pur­chase for lat­er;

• wear­ing engage­ment rings before the wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny is con­sid­ered a bad omen. If a cou­ple wants to empha­size the seri­ous­ness of their inten­tions, it is advis­able to pur­chase spe­cial engage­ment rings for this;

• to main­tain good rela­tions between spous­es, it is unde­sir­able to remove wed­ding rings with­out a good rea­son. It is also not rec­om­mend­ed for spous­es to exchange wed­ding rings, since each such jew­el­ry has a spe­cial ener­gy and can affect peo­ple in dif­fer­ent ways, even if they can be very close to each oth­er.

There is no sin­gle rule applic­a­ble to the dou­ble oath of mar­i­tal fideli­ty — both eccle­si­as­ti­cal and civ­il. The deci­sion again belongs to the new­ly­weds. It hap­pens that the bride and groom are spe­cial­ly wait­ing for the wed­ding in the church to put on wed­ding rings. Oth­er cou­ples, on the con­trary, decide long before the wed­ding in the church to wear wed­ding rings on the left hand, and then trans­fer them to the right on the day of the church wed­ding.