What are McDonald's famous yellow M-shaped symbols called?

McDonald's famous yellow M-shaped symbols are called the Golden Arches.

The arches began as architectural features on McDonald's restaurants in the 1950s. Architect Stanley Clark Meston designed the buildings with large yellow arches at the sides, making the restaurants easy to recognize from passing roads. In 1962, designer Jim Schindler combined the two arches into the stylized M used as a corporate logo.

The Golden Arches gradually became more important than the restaurant buildings themselves. They turned a design feature into a globally recognizable trademark and helped McDonald's create a consistent identity as it expanded beyond the United States.

People sometimes call the symbol simply the “McDonald's M,” but Golden Arches is the established brand term. The arches are not related to the letter M as a family initial; their original inspiration came from the physical architecture of early restaurants.