Onyx
Onyx is banded chalcedony, its layers often black and white, and its Greek name means “fingernail”. In lapidary lore it was the stone of discord: worn at the neck, it was said to cool love and part lovers.
Meaning
Onyx takes its name from the Greek for fingernail. Pliny the Elder, quoting the writer Sudines, says that part of the stone is white like the white of a fingernail, and the Bostock and Riley notes describe it as chalcedony with its colours in flat layers. Pliny’s Arabian onyx is black with a white band. Onyx shares part of its name with sardonyx, the red-banded form on August’s birthstone list (August birthstone).
Origin and history
Pliny’s chapter on onyx (book 37, chapter 24) covers several stones. He gives Indian varieties that were fiery, black or cornel-red, with white veins circling them like an eye, and an Arabian kind that was black with a white zone. The translators’ notes conclude that his onyx took in other kinds of chalcedony as well as the stone we call onyx.
Why onyx was a stone of discord
The lapidaries gave onyx an unhappy reputation. George Frederick Kunz records that worn at the neck it was said to cool the ardour of love, and that Gerolamo Cardano, writing in 1560, said it was worn for this purpose all over India. The same idea took a darker form, Kunz notes: that onyx stirred up quarrels and separated lovers. He suggests that the close union and sharp contrast of its black and white layers may have prompted it.
Read next
- Next in Crystal and gemstone loreBloodstoneBloodstone is dark green chalcedony spotted with red. Pliny the Elder called it heliotropium, “sun-turner”, for a belief that it turned the sun’s light red in water; Christian legend later read the red spots as the blood of Christ.
- The same shape in Egyptian gods and their symbolsPtahThe god of Memphis and patron of craftsmen, drawn as a man wrapped like a mummy, in a close cap, holding the was sceptre, the ankh and the djed pillar. The Greeks called him Hephaestus, and the Apis bull of Memphis was thought to hold his soul.
See also
Carnelian, Amethyst, Rose quartz, Clear quartz, Citrine, Moonstone.
Sources
- Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, book 37, chapter 24, Translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley, 1855, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, book 37, chapter 24 (Onyx)
- The Curious Lore of Precious Stones, by George Frederick Kunz, 1913, J. B. Lippincott (Project Gutenberg edition), ch. 2 (Onyx)
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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