Huh, pretty cool. I live in the blue area, and always thought others used the same type, because that’s what I’ve seen in all the places I’ve been. Is there data available for the rest of the world?
Found this website that should answer your question: https://www.wopc.co.uk/explore/suits
In latin America spanish style cards are often used, and you might find some southern italian designs with italian-americans. But for the most part the rest of the world uses the standard “french” suits.
Also, nowadays if you ask for a deck of cards in most of the other places, you’re still likely to get a french-suited deck. Usually the american style (think of your typical bycicle brand card deck).
When I tried to buy a dutch style deck here in the Netherlands they didn’t even have it at my local board game store! I had to order them online.
There’s a Dutch suit too?? I feel like some island inhabitant who just learned that there’s a whole world out there full of people, planes, porn, and pop culture, after having grown up alone with his coconuts. This is definitely a rabbit hole I need to explore.
Only Latin American country I’ve been to is Brazil, and at least the deck of cards we had there was French suit.
Omg! One of my obsessions!!!
Whenever I travel somewhere, as a souvenir, I buy the local design of playing cards. Even within the colour-regions there are many variations. I might be biased because I’m dutch, but the Dutch Cut is one of my favourites, because of the architecture on the aces!
In Italy every region has their own design! (Even within the ones shown in this map.)
In Spain every single playing card company has its own design (even if they are all swords, sticks, coins and cups), probably more than one. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the same design twice, every house I go to has different cards.
Yeah that happens a lot in the rest of the world too. In Italy there are two main manufacturers and they each have their own slight variations upon every regional design. Here in NL I don’t even see the classic (carta mundi brand) dutch style anymore. It’s mostly American cards here now.
Oh God poor Italy, a nation torn apart not even able to see the same when it comes to playing cards. Truly a cursed people
I mean, up until the '50s they didn’t even speak the same language… every region had their own language (Italians call them “dialect”, but they’re in fact different langauges). Then television came and unified the language (standard Italian is just the dialect of Tuscany).
Italy is a very young country. Sure, the Ancient Romans unified the whole Europe, but Italy has only became a nation in 1861. Pretty young country if you ask me.
Is there a particular reason that the French style is so much more abstract than the others?
Suit evolution is quite an interesting topic. The first known card decks were usually made of several hundreds of cards and were not standardized, some didn’t even have suits. Symbols, images and shapes varied greatly as they were usually hand painted. This European suits are offshoots of Islamic suits. Most likely, each of these suit styles was an attempt to standardize some game or production at different historical points in time and through the interpretation by entirely different artists. The common theory for French abstraction is that they are much simpler symbols which are faster and easier to reproduce in large quantities. Particularly easy to engrave on the first woodwork prints for mass production.
This surprised me when I was younger. Heart, diamond, spade, and club seemed so foreign to me. For the record, in Spain we call them copas (cups), oros (coins (literally golds)), bastos (clubs), and espadas (swords).
Also, the pictures used in the map are not the most commonly used ones here. this (top row) is what most cards use
You do realize that that “club” is a gherkin, right? :)
Fwiw, I like all the properly illustrated variants so much better than the French variant that always feels lifeless to me.
I don’t think so. The other variants of the Spanish-inspired cards are clearly staves. Besides, basto is very, very close to bastón, the word for a staff like a walking stick. Gherkins are called pepinillos
Funny enough, in Portuguese, the names for the sets are dirty direct translations of the Spanish versions, but applied to the French icons. It didn’t make much sense to me calling a losange “golds”, or a heart “cups”, a leaf “swords”, and a clover leaf “sticks”.
Edit: autocorrupt
Somehow this is the first time I’ve realized the symbols don’t match their names at all. Not really sure what’s dirty about them but it’s actually pretty handy to have all suits be called the same names in French and Spanish suits since both are widely used around here in Southern Brazil.
Not the previous poster but I think the “dirty translation” is because in Portugal some things weren’t translated at all (we use the actual word “copas” even though it’s not a Portuguese word) and others are translated differently (were the Spanish use “bastos” - clubs - we use “paus” - sticks).
Do they have ultra-stylized versions too?
The French symbols are either pure black or pure red, they’re symmetrical, and they’re fairly abstract. The “diamond” is just a rhombus. The Spade and Club are fairly abstract shapes that don’t look like anything in particular.
In the image, all the other versions are multicolored, and still seem to represent real-world objects. But, I’m curious if there are “modern” decks where say the coin (oro) is just a circle, or the club is just a long thin rectangle, or something.
Not sure if it is the same as Mexico, but the “oros bastos” set doesn’t have cards 8,9,10 but jump from 7 to sota (fancy lad or something like that), caballo (horse) and Rey (king).
This is similar to the set I was used to: https://www.casino.es/imagenes/juegos/mus/baraja-espanola.jpg
Because of that we use different sets for different games.
Edit: the aces always had very cool designs, with the gold ace having the card brand on display.
