Circle of stars all EU leaders as the official emblem of the European Communities, and in 1993 inherited by the successor organisation, the European Union. All European institutions now use an emblem of their own. The Zodiac is an ancient "circle of stars" where some stars are symbolically combined into 12 Star signs also known as constellations. The etymology of the term Zodiac comes from the Latin zōdiacus, from the Greek ζῳδιακός [κύκλος], meaning "[circle] of animals", derived from ζῴδιον, the diminutive of ζῷον "animal". The Crown of Immortality is a separate and earlier motif (and metaphor) which also uses a circle of
Circle and an exterior. In everyday use, the term "circle" may be used interchangeably to refer to either the boundary of the figure, or to the whole figure including its interior; in strict technical usage, the circle is only the boundary and the whole figure is called a disc. A circle may also be defined as a special kind of ellipse in which the two foci are coincident and the eccentricity is 0, or the two-dimensional shape enclosing the most area per unit perimeter squared, using calculus of variations. The word "circle" derives from the Greek κίρκος/κύκλος ("kirkos/kuklos"), itself a metathesis