The BenjaSymbol

As you came to my blog, you may have noticed a black symbol upon orange to the side, next to my name. If you know me very well, you will probably recognise this as my personal symbol, the BenjaSymbol. When asked what it meant, I replied, "It doesn't really mean anything - It just represents me." I have used this symbol for years now, to mark objects belonging to me, such as my personal pair of scissors. I have also recently begun to add it to my signature, writing it below my name.

Even if you did know about my symbol, you may be curious as to how I came up with this symbol. Is there any hidden symbolism in the BenjaSymbol?

I well remember the day I created the BenjaSymbol. For a week or two, while doing math (I was very young then), I pondered the interesting thought of drawing two sevens, inverting one, and putting them together. Up until this day, I had totally forgot about the idea - except when doing math. However, this day I did remember about my idea, and I drew a 7, then a flipped 7 on top of it. This created the basic hourglass symbol. However, it seemed a bit too plain, so I added a tilde (known to me at that time as a squiggle line, ~) to the top. I got this idea from the Spanish loanword, jalapeño, which has a tilde above the N. Then, to finish it off, I added a period. Thus, the BenjaSymbol was complete!

Ever since then, I have used it as my personal symbol. I've used it for years on documents and objects, to show that they are mine.