Turquoise
Turquoise is a sky-blue to green stone, named “Turkish stone” in medieval French. It is sacred in Navajo (Diné) tradition and was the national stone of Persia, and from the thirteenth century European lapidaries said it saved its wearer from falls.
Meaning
Turquoise got its European name, GIA explains, from the French pierre tourques, “Turkish stone”, in the thirteenth century, because it probably reached Europe through Turkish sources. It belongs to several living traditions. For the Navajo (Diné), the Brooklyn Museum explains, turquoise is the precious material named most often in the accounts of their origins; George Frederick Kunz called it the national stone of the Persians; and GIA calls it the national gem of Tibet.
Origin and history
Pliny the Elder describes a pale green stone, callaina (book 37, chapter 33), that horsemen in the mountains knocked from the rocks with slings rather than climb for it, paid as tribute and wore as their finest necklaces. The mineralogist James Dana took it for turquoise, the translators note, though others thought it peridot. Kunz, who also reads it as turquoise, says that for Pliny it shared only the general virtues of blue-green stones. Its own special power came later: from the thirteenth century, when the name turquoise came into use, it was said to protect its wearer from falling, especially from a horse. Volmar’s thirteenth-century Steinbuch promised that whoever owned a true turquoise set in gold would not hurt a limb in a fall.
Turquoise in Navajo tradition
In the Navajo creation story as the Brooklyn Museum gives it, the people came up into this world and found it covered in water, and dug channels with turquoise shovels tipped with coral to drain it and uncover the land. The museum notes that turquoise is carved into beads and worn whole, ground into sand for sandpaintings and mixed with water as paint, and that its blue stands for water, precious in the southwestern desert. Kunz recorded that Pueblo people from Santo Domingo, New Mexico, objected in 1880 when Major Hyde took turquoise from an old mine they regarded as sacred.
The new moon on a turquoise
Kunz gives a Persian saying that to escape evil and find good fortune one must see the new moon reflected on a friend’s face, on a copy of the Qur’an or on a turquoise. GIA tells a similar belief but gives it to “Hindu mystics”: that seeing a turquoise after the new moon brought great wealth.
De Boot’s turquoise
Anselmus de Boot, physician to Emperor Rudolf II, told how his horse threw him and neither was hurt, and how next morning he found a quarter of his turquoise broken away. He also tried the belief that a turquoise hung on a thread would strike the hours against a glass, and found it worked; Kunz notes that De Boot put this down to the unconscious effect of the mind on the hand.
Where you’ll see it today
whatdoesthissymbolmean.comDecember birthstones: turquoise, tanzanite and zirconTurquoise is a December birthstoneRead next
- Next in Crystal and gemstone loreObsidianObsidian is natural volcanic glass, black and glossy. Pliny the Elder named it after Obsius, who found it in Ethiopia; the Aztecs polished it into mirrors, and John Dee used an Aztec obsidian mirror to call spirits.
- The same shape in Japanese symbolsKamon (family crests) and the mitsudomoeKamon are Japanese family crests: small badges of a plant, a bird, an object or a pattern, often set in a circle and worn on formal dress. The mitsudomoe, three comma shapes swirling in a ring, is one of the commonest, on shrines and on drums.
See also
Amethyst, Rose quartz, Clear quartz, Citrine, Carnelian, Onyx.
Sources
- Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, book 37, chapter 33, Translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley, 1855, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, book 37, chapter 33 (Callaina)
- The Curious Lore of Precious Stones, by George Frederick Kunz, 1913, J. B. Lippincott (Project Gutenberg edition), ch. 2 (Turquoise)
- 6-Strand Necklace (Navajo, ca. 1920s), 71.57.1, Arts of the Americas collection record, Brooklyn Museum, Catalogue text
- Turquoise History and Lore (GIA), Gemological Institute of America, History and lore
- December Birthstones: Turquoise, Tanzanite and Zircon (GIA), Gemological Institute of America, Turquoise birthstone meaning and history
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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