MONOGRAM (Gr. monos, alone, and gramma, letter), a character composed of two or more letters of the hlphabet, often interlaced with other lines, and used as a cipher or abbreviation of a name. A perfect monogram is one in which all the letters of the word are to be traced. The use of monograms began at a very early date. They are found on Greek coins, medals, and seals, and are particularly numerous on the coins of Macedonia and Sicily. Both on coins and in MSS. it was the practice to represent the names of states and cities by monograms, of which above 500 are known, but some have not been deciphered. Monograms occur on the family coins of Rome, but not on the coins of the earlier Roman emperors. Constantine placed on his coins one of the earliest of Christian monograms, which is to be traced in the recesses of the catacombs, composed of the first and second letters of .X.PlOr as (Christus), a monogram which also appeared on the Laba rum (q.v.), and was continued on the coins of the succeeding emperors of the east down to Alexander Comnenns and Theodorus Lascaris. We often find it combined with the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet (Rev. i. 8). Another well-known monogram is that of the name of Jesus, HIS, from the first three letters of 1112Eoi75.
Popes, emperors, and kings of France during the middle ages were in the practice of using a monogram instead of signing their names. Almost all the coins of the French kings of the Carlovingian race bear their respective monograms, as also do those of Alfred and some of the other Saxon kings of England.
Painters and engravers in Germany and Italy have used monograms to a large extent as a means of distinguishing their works. In these, the initial letters of their names were often interwoven with figures of a symbolical character, so as to form a rebus on the artist's name. The first typographers distinguished their publications by wood-cut vignettes, whose invention is ascribed to the elder Aldus; but besides these, each made use of a monogram or cipher, a series of which, well known to the bibliographer, fixes the identity of theancient editions, German, Italian, and English, from the invention of printing down to the middle or end of the 16th century. For a detailed account of the monograms of early printers and others, see Brulliot, Dietionnaire des Monogrammes (Munich, 1832-34): Horne's Introduction to Bibliography, vol. ii.; and Herbert's and Ames's Typographical Antiquities.