Get Married Rings

If you have ever paid attention to the way that people choose to wear their wedding rings, you might have received mixed signals so far. This because people from different parts of the world, with different religions or simply with different traditions and beliefs, put their rings either on the left hand or on the right hand. Nevertheless, you are about to find out that the majority belongs to the left hand and the explanation could only be related with an old confidence that we have inherited from Romans.

Why left hand?

Even though in the past people were convinced that this is the way that things should be done for a rather silly reason, we can nowadays look at it rather with condescension and amusement. The fact is that the Romans had little knowledge at that time regarding the way that the circulatory system works. So before the medical science made some major discoveries, there was this belief that the left hand was directly bounded with the heart. It seemed logical since they were both on the same side of the body. This observation had a major importance for deciding to wear the wedding rings on the left hand. Nevertheless, it was more than that…

Why the third finger?

The funnier part it will only now begin. They thought that the left hand was linked with the heart and they were also aware that there were blood vessels in the human body that took the blood to the major organs but also vessels that were bringing it back. And Romans were convinced that one certain vein was making the link between the third finger of the left hand and the heart. That vein that was responsible with the so – called hand – heart connection was called by them, in Latin, as “vena amori”, which means “vein of love”. Naturally, the finger crossed by the vein of love was the most adequate to wear a symbol of love, the wedding ring.

A practical reason

Once we have evolved, became smarter and gathered more and more scientific information we got to be less severe regarding this habit. Some Orthodox countries, where the wedding ring is worn on the right finger, can make this proof. Nevertheless, one could easily understand why is it more convenient to have the ring on the left finger. This is because most people are right handed, so they use the right hand for most of their daily actions. Under such circumstances, it is safer for the ring to be kept on a hand that is less used for no matter what type of activity.11