Origins
The word 'ring' is one of the foundational shape-words of the Germanic languages, denoting circularity in all its manifestations — from the gold band on a finger to a ring of standing stones, a boxing ring, a tree ring, and the ring of a bell. Its etymology reveals that the jewelry sense, though now dominant, was originally just one application of a much broader concept.
Old English 'hring' meant 'a circle, a circular band, a circular group of people or objects.' The initial 'h' (which was probably a voiceless velar fricative /x/ or a breathy /h/) was lost during the Middle English period, producing the modern form 'ring.' The Proto-Germanic ancestor *hringaz is attested across the entire Germanic family: German 'Ring,' Dutch 'ring,' Old Norse 'hringr,' Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian 'ring,' and Gothic 'hrings' (in the dative plural 'hriggam').
The deeper etymology is debated. The most widely cited proposal connects *hringaz to a PIE root *(s)kreng- or *kreng- meaning 'to turn, bend, curve.' This would make 'ring' etymologically 'the curved thing' or 'the thing that bends around.' Some scholars connect it to the same root that produced 'cringe' (to bend the body) and 'crank' (a bent handle), though these connections are not universally accepted.
Old English Period
The semantic range of 'ring' in Old English was remarkably broad. A 'hring' could be a finger ring, an arm ring (a bracelet, one of the most important forms of wealth and gift-giving in Anglo-Saxon culture), a circular enclosure, a group of people standing in a circle, or any circular object. The Anglo-Saxon king was often called a 'hring-giver' (beaga brytta, literally 'ring-distributor'), because the giving of gold arm rings to followers was the central act of lordship. In Beowulf, the word 'hring' appears dozens of times, referring to rings of gold, the ringed mail of a coat of armor (chain mail was made of interlocking metal rings), and the circular structure of the mead-hall itself.
The compound 'ring-mail' (chain mail, armor made of linked metal rings) preserves one of the oldest military applications of the word. Each link in a mail shirt was a small 'hring,' and the garment as a whole was a fabric of rings — a brilliant metallurgical technology that the Proto-Germanic peoples may have independently developed or adopted from Celtic neighbors.
The word 'rink' is a dialectal Scottish form of 'ring,' preserving an older pronunciation. A 'rink' was originally a circular area marked out on the ground for a game — curling, bowling, or other sports. The modern 'ice rink' and 'skating rink' descend from this sense, though modern rinks are usually rectangular rather than circular.
Later Development
The boxing 'ring' preserves the original circular sense more literally — early bare-knuckle fights took place in a circle of spectators ('a ring of people'), and even after the fighting area was formalized with ropes and corners into a square, the name 'ring' stuck. Similarly, the circus 'ring' is literally a circular performance area, directly continuing the Old English meaning.
'Ring' in the sense of 'the sound a bell makes' is a separate word with a different etymology, from Old English 'hringan' (to ring, resound), though the two words may ultimately be related through the circular motion of a bell's clapper. The homophony of 'ring' (circle) and 'ring' (sound) has been productive in English wordplay and metaphor.
The cultural significance of the ring as jewelry is immense. The wedding ring tradition in Western culture dates at least to ancient Rome, where the 'anulus pronubus' (betrothal ring) was placed on the fourth finger of the left hand because of the belief (attributed to the physician Aulus Gellius) that a vein ran directly from that finger to the heart — the 'vena amoris.' Signet rings, class rings, championship rings, and the papal 'Ring of the Fisherman' all invest the simple circular band with layers of social meaning: authority, identity, belonging, and commitment. Tolkien's Ring of Power draws on millennia of Indo-European and Germanic ring mythology, from the Norse Draupnir (Odin's self-replicating gold ring) to the cursed ring of the Nibelung cycle. The word 'ring,' small and ancient, carries the weight of all this history.