About Cards and Suits

Suits are the categories into which the cards are divided. Each card belongs to a specific suit that is usually represented by symbols. Suits may also be indicated by a color printed on it.
There are many types of decks that have been used in Europe, but all of them have the same character:

• They have four suits.
• Each card has a rank that distinguish it from the other cards.
• There is exactly one card of any given rank in any given suit.

Differences

The playing cards were brought to Europe in the 15th century, but only later standard suits began to appear.
Differences between the European suits are mostly in the numbers of cards in each suit and the inclusion or exclusion of extra series of cards. There were other differences like the letters on the cards. The French deck had "R" for Roi (king) and "D" for Dame (queen).
There are other common differences between European traditional decks, especially in the symbols that are used to signify the suits. The Anglo-Saxon suits (hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades) are changed to hearts, bells, acorns and leaves in the traditional German suit and to shields, flowers, bells and acorns in the Swiss German suits. In the Italo-Spanish suits it changed to cups, coins, clubs and swords.

Other deck variations

Since the standard deck has only two colors (black and red) in some languages, the suits are called the "colors". And in order to make things simple, four-color decks began to appear and to be used in specific games. In those decks the diamonds are usually blue, the hearts are reds, the spades are black and the clubs are green.

There also other variations that became quite common among serious cards players. There are people who suggest expanding the standard Anglo-American deck to five, six or more suits and even proposed rules for the expended suits for popular cards games like rummy, bridge and poker.