Exploring Engagement Ring Customs Across Cultures

Have you ever wondered why we use rings as the foundational tokens for engagement and marriage? You wouldn’t be alone. The giving of rings is as natural as drinking water, so entrenched as it is in our contemporary Western culture; it will come as no surprise to you, though, that this symbol has history.

What may surprise you is that there are other histories – and that those histories impact how other cultures use engagement rings in their own rituals; after all, that is what this is! To find out more about the engagement ring from a global perspective, you need do little more but read on…

About Engagement Rings

The engagement ring has been a symbol of commitment in the West for generations upon generations. Bearing in mind that our dear homeland isn’t the oldest country in the West, to say the least, it should make sense that we have Europe to thank for our use of engagement rings as symbols of commitment. Put simply, proposals don’t happen without rings today – even if you’re not a religious couple. But this is a cultural seed. And there are many cultures. So what seeds can you find globally?

Cultural Perspectives

Western Traditions

As far as contemporary Western traditions are concerned, it’s all about diamonds, baby. News sites were quick to cover the size of Taylor Swift’s rock – and no surprise, either, as the enviable crystal and ‘girl’s best friend’ rules the roost for modern ring customs.

The history of such gloriously-adorned engagement rings is simultaneously very deep and very shallow. Engagement rings themselves go back to the Roman era (and potentially even earlier), with metal bands being used as symbols of belonging; in the intervening centuries, the ring became symbolic of eternity, though today it stands more as a gesture. The popularity of diamonds in rings rose in the 1400s in mainland Europe – but for Americans, the love affair began in the late 1940s with a, in 20^th century terms, viral ad campaign from Tiffany.

Eastern Traditions

Rings had their own cultural import in eastern Asia, whether jade thumb rings worn by Chinese archers or the ornate rings of the Ottoman empire. Really, though, the engagement ring as we understand it today is a Western custom – and one adopted by the east and south-east Asia from the 1940s onwards.

In Japan, rings are only exchanged where Western ceremonies are followed closely, a trapping of non-religious couples. In China, meanwhile, differing societal expectations relating to gender imbalances mean that more value is placed on the big gesture; the bigger the ring, the better.

African Traditions

The African continent is huge, hence impossible to condense into a few paragraphs of context. With so many highly-localised traditions across the North of Africa alone, suffice to say you’ll find a wide variety of traditions that don’t follow contemporary Western standard. Indeed, the closest you may find to an engagement ring is the bangle, traditionally iron, worn on the ankle to reveal an engagement.