The reason the fourth finger was the wedding ring finger of choice? There’s a touching explanation. “In ancient times, it was thought that there was a vein in your finger on your left hand that ran straight to your heart,” explains Bernadette Chapman, the founder of the UK Alliance of Wedding Planners. And the heart, of course, was thought to be the center of our emotions back then. So ancient Romans called this vein the vena amoris, Latin for “vein of love.”

Our knowledge of the human body has evolved greatly since then, of course. Most notably…we humans have no such vein, sadly. In addition, we know now that the heart is an organ for pumping blood—but that hasn’t stopped us from continuing to talk about it in romantic, emotional contexts. Likewise, we still wear wedding rings on our fourth fingers! Learn more about wedding history by finding out where the tradition of proposing on bended knee came from.