Card games are undoubtedly some of the most popular games worldwide. According to the Guardian, the Chinese, Indians and Persians all claim to be the inventor of this popular pastime. And today some people even turned card games into a business. Casinos and magicians would be in a bit of a fix without cards. Despite the fact that cards were being played all over the place at times when there wasn’t much consensus as to what a card deck should look like, almost all card decks included court cards and many of them even contained four different suits. But who chose today’s hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs and why can they be found in almost any card deck?
The four suits that we know today came about when the French became the main producer of card decks in Europe. Earlier on, card games were still more of an upper class pastime and the laborious manufacturing process (many were hand-painted) made them quite expensive. When the French found a way to make the production cheaper and less time-consuming, they took over the card making monopoly from the Germans. In fact, the suits spades, hearts and clubs are thought to be the French take on the suits the Germans used which were leaves, hearts, and hawk bells according to this article on Ladbrokes. The fourth German suit was acorns but the French turned those into diamonds.
Considering that card games were still quite elitist, this is hardly surprising. In France, the four suits also represented the four classes: spades were the nobility, hearts were the clergy, diamonds were merchants and clubs were the peasants. On Card Magic, you can find much more information on the symbolism of the suits, the numbers of cards and much more. For instance, there are 52 playing cards in a standard deck just as there are 52 weeks in a year. In total there are 12 court cards, which overlaps with the number of months a year in the Gregorian calendar. Each suit contains 13 cards and in a lunar year, the moon circles the earth 13 times.
There are many more connections one can make between the number of cards and the passing of time. It might be a coincidence that many of the numbers in a card game correspond with our way of measuring time but there certainly are many overlaps. It is not too unlikely that the French intended to make a deck of cards. Either way, today the four suits are a vital part of almost any card game whether it be poker or Uno.
