What is the astronomical symbol for Venus commonly called?
Answer
Female sign
What is the astronomical symbol for Venus commonly called? It is commonly called the female sign.
The symbol ♀ is the traditional planetary symbol for Venus. It consists of a circle above a small cross and is often interpreted as a hand mirror associated with the goddess Venus. That interpretation fits Venus's traditional links with beauty, femininity, and the planetary metal copper, whose polished surface was used for ancient mirrors.
The same sign became widely used to represent the female sex in biology and botany. Carl Linnaeus and later naturalists adopted the planetary symbols for male and female in the eighteenth century because the association was easy to remember and useful in recording plant reproduction. The corresponding male sign, ♂, is the traditional symbol for Mars.
The symbol's history is older and less uniform than its modern form suggests. Early astronomical manuscripts sometimes depicted Venus without the lower cross, and the exact origin of the mirror interpretation remains conjectural. In modern professional astronomy, the International Astronomical Union generally prefers letter abbreviations such as V, but ♀ remains familiar in astronomy, astrology, biology, and popular culture.