Tetraskelion

The Swastika (also known outside the Indian subcontinent as the Hakenkreuz, gammadion cross, cross cramponnée, croix gammée, fylfot, or tetraskelion) (as a character 卐 or 卍) is an ancient religious symbol originating from the Indian subcontinent, that generally takes the form of an equilateral cross with four legs each bent at 90 degrees. It is considered to be a sacred and auspicious symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism and dates back at least 11,000 years.

Western literature's older term for the symbol, gammadion cross, derives mainly from its appearance, which is identical to four Greek gamma letters affixed to each other. The name Swastika comes from the Sanskrit (Devanagari: ), and denotes a "lucky or auspicious object". It has been used as a decorative element in various cultures since at least the Neolithic Age. It is known most widely as an important symbol, long used in Indian religions, denoting "auspiciousness".

The swastika was adopted by several organizations in pre-World War I-Europe and later, and most notably, by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany prior to World War II. In many Western countries, the swastika has been highly stigmatized because of its association with Nazism.

The word swastika has been in use in English since the 1870s, replacing gammadion (from Greek γαμμάδιον). It was loaned from the Sanskrit term (Devanagari: ), which is transliterated svastika under the commonly used IAST transliteration system, but is pronounced closer to "swastika" when letters are used with their English values, which is why the word is invariably so spelled in Roman script in India. Note that the sound represented by "व" in Devanagari, and "v" in the standard IAST transliteration of Sanskrit (and other Indian scripts), is the labio-dental approximant, between the English "v" and the English "w". The sound persists in modern Hindi and other North Indian languages, and sometimes, e.g. when placed after an "s", sounds to the English ear like "w", while elsewhere it sounds like English "v". (To the Hindi or Sanskrit ear, conversely, English "v" and "w" are a single phoneme.) An English speaker who is unable to correctly form the Sanskrit (or Hindi) labio-dental approximant should say "swastika" rather than "svastika".

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