Aquarius symbol (♒)
♒ is the glyph of Aquarius, the Water Bearer, the eleventh sign of the Western zodiac. Astrologers give its dates as 20 January to 18 February, and in their tradition it is an air sign ruled by Saturn.
Meaning
♒ is Unicode character U+2652 AQUARIUS: two zigzag lines, one above the other. Richard Hinckley Allen (1899) calls it “the astronomers’ symbol for the sign”, showing undulating waves, and reports that it is said to have been the Egyptian hieroglyph for water, which was Aquarius’s name in Egypt. Unicode cross-refers the glyph to 🏺, the amphora. Aquarius is Latin for water-carrier; in Greek the constellation is Ὑδροχόος (Hydrochóos), the Water-pourer.
Origin and history
Where the twelve sign glyphs came from is not known. Encyclopaedia Britannica says their history is unknown and that they first appear in Greek manuscripts of the late Middle Ages. Allen cites Clerke, who found them in manuscripts of about the 10th century but in carvings only from the 15th or 16th, and Brown, who quotes the antiquary C. W. King: King found the glyphs on no antique work and suspected “Arab sages” had devised them, a view Brown did not share. The waves of ♒ are the plainest picture among the glyphs, but the story that they copy an Egyptian hieroglyph is one Allen gives only as “said to have been”.
Allen draws the figure from classical sources as a youth pouring water from an urn, the stream running down into the mouth of the Southern Fish. The Greeks called the urn’s stars Κάλπη, the pitcher, and Latin writers Urna.
Ganymede’s urn
Manilius and other Latin writers named the Water-pourer Ganymedes, the Phrygian boy who was cup-bearer to Jupiter. Spence, describing the figure on the Farnese globe, wrote that he “holds the cup or little urn in his hand, inclined downwards; and is always pouring out of it”, and Allen notes that Manilius ended his lines on Aquarius with Sic profluit urna, “and so the urn flows on”.
A water glyph on an air sign
Despite its waves, Aquarius is an air sign in astrology, not a water sign. In Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos it belongs to the third triangle, Gemini, Libra and Aquarius, governed by Saturn by day and Mercury by night, and Britannica’s table of the signs today puts all three under air.
What astrologers say Aquarius means
In Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, Aquarius is one of the four solid signs. It is masculine and one of the two houses of Saturn, with Capricorn, signs Ptolemy calls “cold and wintry”. Astrology today, as Britannica describes it, makes Aquarius a fixed sign, and lists “independent, intellectual, detached” as the traits traditionally attached to it. Britannica adds that astrology is not supported by science: no correlation has been found between birth dates and personality.
See also
Capricorn symbol (♑), Aries symbol (♈), Taurus symbol (♉), Gemini symbol (♊), Cancer symbol (♋), Leo symbol (♌).
Sources
- Miscellaneous Symbols, Range: 2600–26FF (code chart), The Unicode Standard, Unicode Consortium, U+2652
- Star-Names and Their Meanings: Aquarius, Richard Hinckley Allen, 1899 (reprinted by Dover as Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning), LacusCurtius (Bill Thayer, University of Chicago), Aquarius
- Tetrabiblos, Book I, Claudius Ptolemy, 2nd century AD; translated by F. E. Robbins (Loeb Classical Library, 1940), LacusCurtius (Bill Thayer, University of Chicago), I.11, I.17, I.18
- Zodiac, The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica; last revised by Rick Livingston, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Wayback Machine copy, 11 September 2026), Signs and dates; Astrology
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Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research