Male and female symbol (⚥)
A circle with the male arrow and the female cross both attached: Unicode’s male and female sign. Unicode lists it for intersex and androgynous, and as “hermaphroditic” in botany; Britannica calls it a bigender sign.
Meaning
The character is U+26A5 MALE AND FEMALE SIGN. It puts the arrow of the male sign ♂ and the cross of the female sign ♀ on one circle. Unicode’s names list gives it the readings “intersex, androgynous” and “hermaphroditic (in botany)”. Britannica calls the combined Venus and Mars symbol “a bigender designation”.
Origin and history
Linnaeus, who brought the Mars and Venus signs into botany in the 18th century, marked a hermaphrodite flower with a third planet’s sign: ☿, Mercury, which Britannica describes as a circle and cross topped with a half circle. NASA reads ☿ as the head and winged cap of the god Mercury above his caduceus, his staff. Unicode still lists “intersexuality” among the meanings of U+263F MERCURY, beside its old alchemical meaning, quicksilver.
The combined sign entered Unicode in version 4.1, published on 31 March 2005, in a run of sixteen characters that begins with the doubled female sign. Beside it is U+26A4 INTERLOCKED FEMALE AND MALE SIGN, ⚤.
Often confused with
The transgender symbol ⚧ has a third arm: an arrow pointing up and to the left, crossed by a short stroke. The male and female symbol has only the arrow up to the right and the cross below.
Read next
- Next in Gender symbolsTransgender symbol (⚧)The symbol of the transgender community: a circle with the male arrow, the female cross and a third arm, an arrow crossed by a stroke. The trans activist Holly Boswell is credited with designing it in 1993.
- The same shape in Occult and alchemical symbolsPlanetary metals (☉ ☽ ☿ ♀ ♂ ♃ ♄)The seven signs alchemists wrote for the seven metals known in antiquity, each borrowed from the heavenly body it was paired with: the sun ☉ for gold, the moon ☽ for silver, Mercury ☿ for quicksilver, Venus ♀ for copper, Mars ♂ for iron, Jupiter ♃ for tin and Saturn ♄ for lead.
See also
Male symbol (♂), Female symbol (♀).
Sources
- Unicode Character Database: NamesList.txt, Unicode Consortium, 26A5 MALE AND FEMALE SIGN; 263F MERCURY
- Unicode Character Database: DerivedAge.txt, the Unicode version in which each character was added, Unicode Consortium, 26A2..26B1
- Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard: publication dates, Unicode Consortium, Version 4.1.0
- Gender symbol, by August Samie, Encyclopaedia Britannica, last updated 21 November 2025 (Internet Archive copy, 13 December 2025), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Introduction; history
- Solar System Symbols, NASA Science, NASA, The Symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from arrows, circles or crosses.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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