aShademan

August 20, 2006

{mottos} What's your school's motto?

I have always wondered what the Latin words one sees around the schools' coat-of-arms mean.
Ours at the University of Alberta is "Quaecumque Vera", which means "Whatsoever things are true". I found these and the meaning of other mottos on Wikipedia (see list of mottos). Most of the academic mottos promote finding truth, having wisdom, or being knowledgable. I suspect that having coat-of-arms and mottos are mainly European traditions, since the coat-of-arms belongs to medieval knights and the words are usually in Latin.

The wiki page has mottos from different universities, most of which are located in Britain, Australia, Canada, and occasionally US. Having few universities from other parts of the world might be due to the fact that I found the page on the English wikipedia, but still I have no clue why few US schools are included.

Most old schools seem to have been inspired by religion:
University of Cambridge: Hinc lucem et pocula sacra ([From] here [the university] [we receive] light and sacred draughts [knowledge])
University of Oxford: Dominus Illuminatio Mea (The Lord is my Light)

Most modern ones emphasize truth, wisdom, and knowledge.

Some post-modern schools tend to be different in everything:
Stanford University: Die Luft der Freiheit weht (The wind of freedom blows)

I found the motto of Univ. of British Columbia particularly short and nice: Tuum est ("It is yours"). It doesn't say what is yours, so I guess you can fill in the blanks as you desire!

What's your school's motto?

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