What is the name of McDonald’s yellow “M” symbol?

McDonald’s yellow “M” symbol is called the Golden Arches.

The name comes from the large yellow arches incorporated into McDonald’s restaurant architecture during the 1950s. They were intended to make the buildings highly visible from nearby roads and to give the restaurants a distinctive profile.

The arches gradually shifted from physical building elements into a graphic identity. In 1962, designer Jim Schindler created a logo that combined the two arches into an “M”-shaped mark. That transformation helped turn a piece of restaurant architecture into a compact symbol usable on signs, packaging, uniforms, and advertising.

The Golden Arches are often described simply as the McDonald’s logo, but the term specifically refers to the arch imagery and its historical development. Their bright yellow color and simplified form helped make the mark recognizable across different languages and countries.