情人節快到了，隨便走進一家商店，你都可以看見心形的或印有愛心圖案的美麗卡片和浪漫禮物。為什么情人節愛心是這種心形而不是人類心臟的形狀？這種心形圖案從何而來呢？

Love is in the air this month, and images of two-lobed hearts are all over everything: candy, cards, decorations, you name it. That the heart is symbolic of love and passion isn't surprising—ancient Greek and Roman thinkers, including Aristotle, thought the organ was the center of all emotions. Why the heart symbol you see everywhere in February doesn't look anything like an actual human heart, though, is a little less clear.
情人節前夕的空氣中彌漫著愛的味道，糖果、卡片、裝飾物上，隨處可見這種心形圖案。用心來代表愛情和激情并不令人意外，包括亞里士多德在內的古希臘和羅馬的思想家認為心臟是一切情緒的發源中心。但為什么你在情人節前夕看到的心形象征圖案一點也不像人類的心臟呢？這就比較難說清楚了。

The symbol goes at least as far back as the 1400s, when it appeared on European playing cards to mark one of the red suits, though it may even be older than that. The shape is pretty much a mystery, though. There are a few different hypotheses to explain it, but none of them have been confirmed.
這一心形象征要追溯到15世紀，當時這種紅心作為其中一種花色出現在歐洲紙牌上，不過心形的歷史也許更悠久。心形的起源還真是挺神秘的。關于它的起源，有幾種假想，但這些假想都還未得到證實。

One suggested origin for the symbol is that it comes from the ancient African city-state of Cyrene, whose merchants traded in the rare, and now extinct, plant silphium. The plant was used to season food, but doubled as a contraceptive. A silphium seedpod looks like a valentine's heart, so the shape became associated with sex, and then with love.
一種假想指出，心形象征源于古代非洲城邦昔蘭尼，那里的商人販賣一種罕見的現今已經絕種的串葉松香草。這種植物過去用來給食物調味，也可用于避孕。串葉松香草的心皮看起來就像情人心，于是這種形狀就和性愛乃至愛情關聯在一起。

Another possibility is that the shape is a crude representation of a public mound, the vulva, a pair of breasts, buttocks, or a pair of testicles. It may even have come from a poor attempt at drawing an actual heart. A lousy artist, an inaccurate description of the subject, or a malformed model all could have led to that shape.
另一種說法是，心形是陰阜、陰戶、一對乳房、屁股或一對睪丸的粗俗象征。這種形狀甚至可能只是因為想畫心臟卻畫得不像。技藝拙劣的藝術家、對心臟外觀的不準確描述或畸形的心臟模型都有可能導致這種圖案的產生。

The Catholic church explains the symbol as coming from a vision that Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque had, where the "Sacred Heart of Jesus"—associated with love and devotion by Catholics—appeared in this shape surrounded by thorns. But Alacoque didn't have this vision until the late 1600s, well after the symbol was already documented. This makes it the unlikeliest of origin stories, but the church's frequent use of the shape was probably a driving factor in popularizing it as a symbol of love.
天主教會解釋說，這種心形象征來自圣瑪格麗特·瑪麗·阿拉克克的一個幻象，她看見“耶穌的神圣心臟”——在天主教里與愛和奉獻有關——被荊棘環繞著以這種形狀出現。但是阿拉克克直到17世紀晚期才有這一幻象，而在此之前早就有了關于這種心形象征的記載。所以這個起源故事最不可能是真的，但是天主教堂對這種心形的頻繁使用很可能促使它作為愛情的象征廣泛流傳。

英文來源：Mental Floss
翻譯&編輯：丹妮