The History of a Standard 52 Card Playing Deck

"The idea of suit symbols may have originated with Chinese ‘Money’ cards. However, the suits that made their way into Europe were probably an adaptation of the Islamic cups, swords, coins, and polo sticks. As Europeans didn't understand what the polo sticks were they reassigned them as batons and they became what we know today as the ‘Latin’ suit-signs. These were used in Spain and the Iberian peninsula and Italy until French card makers had a brilliant commercial coup of inventing the ‘French’ suit-signs which are much simpler to reproduce."

There are different types of playing card suits. In Europe alone there are severak. For example, in Germany the suits are hearts, acorns, bells, and leaves. While in Italy and Spain the suits are chalices, swords, coins, and bats. The standard deck suits we are familiar with are shared by Britian and France and they are hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades.