See someone wearing a ring on their right index finger and you can bet they’re not married. A ring on the left ring finger, though, means that person is “taken.”
The choice of wedding ring finger seems arbitrary, but there’s actually historical reason it became known as the “ring finger,” and why most people wear their wedding band on the left.
The wedding ring tradition dates back to ancient Egypt, as archaeologists have found evidence in hieroglyphics that brides would wear a ring, according to the BBC. Find out exactly why people proposed with rings, then and now.
And other ancient cultures wore wedding rings as well; people have been slipping wedding rings on their left ring fingers since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
The reason the fourth finger was the wedding ring finger of choice? There’s a touching explanation. “In ancient times, it was thought that there was a vein in your finger on your left hand that ran straight to your heart,” explains Bernadette Chapman, the founder of the UK Alliance of Wedding Planners.
And the heart, of course, was thought to be the center of our emotions back then. So ancient Romans called this vein the vena amoris, Latin for “vein of love.”
