# What finger is a widowed person supposed to move the wedding ring?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-finger-is-a-widowed-person-supposed-to-move-the-wedding-ring/402478>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 2, 2007, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-finger-is-a-widowed-person-supposed-to-move-the-wedding-ring/402478 "2007-05-02T15:58:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-finger-is-a-widowed-person-supposed-to-move-the-wedding-ring/402478/21 "2012-07-15T18:24:35Z")

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> [@Shosy](#):
>
> There are different traditions about engagement rings, but in the Catholic church (except for anglophones) the ring goes on the right. And in 1964 (when you could still file a complaint with the civil guard saying how your neighbor didn’t go to mass on Sunday) it would be even more unheard of to deviate from that. I’m not saying that you’re mistaken in anyway, but this sounds exceptional.
> 
> I was married in Leon, and in Leon and Asturias, left hand is unheard of except from watching American television. Anyone I know from Andalusia, Valencia, etc who wear it on the left are normally married to foreigners.

You’re calling the Catalans anglophones, seriously - given the English of some of my Catalan coworkers, that’d be quite a surprise to the foreigners in the team. Want my mother’s phone number? It may be influence from the anglos (God knows the Catalans are the most English of Spaniards in many ways), but it’s a story that gets trotted out several times a year, and which never fails to show up around these dates: my parents got married on July 7th. My mother’s sister and her husbands always wore their rings on the left; my grandmother raises her left hand when she complains that she can’t wear her wedding ring any more (her hands are more like claws than hands, nowadays, comes from being 98yo).

It’s not universal, is all I’m saying.

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