What does jade mean?

Jade’s meaning comes mostly from China, where the stone has stood for good character (purity, integrity, kindness), for protection and good fortune, for rank, and for the bond between generations of a family. GIA’s summary of jade lore runs along the same lines: jadeite symbolizes prosperity, success and good luck, and the Chinese associate jade with clarity of mind and purity of spirit. People gave the stone these meanings over thousands of years. None of them is a property of the mineral.

This page is about jade the stone. The word “jaded” is a different matter, covered in a short note near the end.

One name, two stones

“Jade” covers two different tough stones, nephrite and jadeite. They were told apart only in 1863, by the French mineralogist Alexis Damour, and the cultural meanings attach to both. In China, though, jade meant nephrite for thousands of years, and according to GIA the first jadeite arrived from Burma (now Myanmar) only in the late 1700s. The bright green stone many Westerners picture is the newcomer to a much older tradition. The mineral side of this is in jade vs jadeite vs nephrite.

Where the meaning of jade comes from in China

The Chinese meaning was built in four layers.

1. Ritual object. Jade has been worked in China for about 8,000 years. The Hongshan and Liangzhu cultures of the Neolithic made jades mainly for ceremony and burial, including the bi (璧), a flat disc with a central hole, and the cong (琮), a squared tube with a round bore. The British Museum says the original purpose of these carvings is unknown. The familiar reading of the bi as heaven and the cong as earth comes from texts written many centuries later.
2. Badge of rank. Under the Zhou dynasty the form of jade a noble could wear or hold was regulated, and jade came to stand for the right to rule.
3. Emblem of virtue. The Book of Rites has Confucius explain that a gentleman values jade not because it is scarce but because its qualities resemble the virtues. Around AD 100 the scholar Xu Shen, in his dictionary, defined yu (玉), jade, as the fairest of stones and gave it five virtues, pairing its warm luster with kindness, its translucency with uprightness, its clear ring with wisdom, its way of breaking without bending with courage, and its edges that are sharp but do not cut with integrity.
4. Good-luck jewelry. From the Tang and Song dynasties jade moved out of ritual into daily life as personal ornament carved with lucky subjects, which is the form most people meet today.

The full account, with the burial jades and the sayings, is in what jade represents in Chinese culture.

What jade means outside China

Mesoamerica. Here jade meant jadeite, the only kind found in the region. According to the World History Encyclopedia, the Olmec, the Maya and later the Aztecs linked its green with life and renewal, the sky, water and young maize shoots, and small pieces were sometimes placed in the mouth of the dead. For the Classic Maya it also embodied wind and the breath soul. The Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford says the Aztecs held jade more valuable than gold, and that by law only the nobility could own or wear it.

New Zealand. For Maori, pounamu (greenstone, mainly nephrite) is a treasure. Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, describes the mere pounamu, a short greenstone club, as the main symbol of chieftainship. Important pieces are given personal names, are regarded as tapu (sacred) and as having great mana (status), and were used to seal peace between tribes.

Europe. Europe contributed the name. Sixteenth-century Spaniards called the stone piedra de ijada, stone of the flank, after seeing people in the Americas hold it against their sides to ease pain. The phrase passed through French into English as jade. The name records a historical remedy, not a medical fact, a story told in jade benefits: claims versus evidence.

Is jade good luck?

Traditionally yes, as a belief. Jade is worn against the skin as a protective charm, and a widely held folk belief says that when a jade bangle or pendant cracks, it has taken a misfortune in place of its wearer (what it means when a jade bracelet breaks covers that in full).

A common Chinese saying holds that gold has a price and jade has none. The practical side of it: gold is priced by weight every day, while no two pieces of jade are alike and no international price index exists, so every piece is priced on its own.

People in the jade trade disagree about how literally to take the luck. Some dealers present protection and good fortune as real effects. Others say plainly that jade is a beautiful stone, that people gave it its meanings over centuries, and that its worth rests on shared belief. The evidence sides with the second group. There is no scientific evidence that jade or any gemstone brings luck, protection or health, and a medically reviewed Healthline summary of the claims made for jade finds none of them supported by research. The beliefs themselves, and the customs around them, are set out in jade spiritual meaning.

Jade symbolism in carved shapes

Much of what a carved jade “says” is a pun. In Chinese, an object whose name sounds like a lucky word can stand for that word.

Motif	What it stands for	Why
Bat	Blessings, happiness	The word for bat, fu, sounds like the word for blessing
Peach	Long life	An old emblem of longevity and immortality
Fish	Abundance	Fish, yu, sounds like the word for surplus
Dragon	Power, prosperity and goodness	A long-standing emblem; no pun involved
Bi disc	Heaven	The later reading of the ancient ritual disc

The bat, peach, dragon and bi readings are GIA’s. Pendant shapes carry wishes in the same way: the plain round disc is a wish for safety, the blank plaque for a life without trouble, the gourd for fortune and rank, and Guanyin and the laughing Buddha are the most common figures. Jade necklace and pendant meaning explains each one, and jade bracelet meaning does the same for bangles.

Jade as a gift and an emblem today

In Chinese families jade is the typical heirloom. A bangle or pendant passes from a grandmother or mother to the next generation, or is given to a bride by her mother or mother-in-law, and is understood to carry the giver’s blessing. People in the trade give one reason it is handed on whole: unlike gold, jade cannot be divided or melted down.

Outside the family, jade serves as an official emblem and a milestone gift:

• GIA lists jade as the gem for the 12th wedding anniversary, while noting that no single authoritative anniversary list exists.
• Wyoming made jade its state gemstone in 1967, Alaska made it the state gem in 1968, and British Columbia adopted it as its official gemstone in 1968. All three are nephrite regions.
• The medals of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games were the first Olympic medals to use jade. Each has jade inlaid in the back, in a design based on the bi.

Jade, jaded and the name Jade

“Jaded” and the old noun jade for a worn-out horse have nothing to do with the stone. According to Merriam-Webster, that word is older, goes back to Middle English, and is of uncertain origin. The given name Jade, by contrast, is taken from the stone.

Where to go next

If someone gave you a jade piece, read jade spiritual meaning for the beliefs and jade benefits for what the evidence supports. For what each color is and how it is regarded, start with jade colors.

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