The trident was not thought of as a national symbol until 1917, when one of the most prominent Ukrainian historians, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, proposed to adopt it as a national symbol (alongside other variants, including an arbalest, a bow or a cossack carrying a musket, i.e. images that carried considerable historical and cultural and heraldic significance for Ukraine).

The modern "trident" symbol was adopted as the coat of arms of the Ukrainian People's Republic in February 1918, designed by Vasyl Krychevsky.

[2][3][4] It was stamped on the gold and silver coins issued by Vladimir the Great (r. 980–1015), also known as Volodymyr, who might have inherited the symbol from his ancestors (such as Sviatoslav I) as a dynastic coat of arms, and he passed it on to his sons, Sviatopolk I (1015–1019) and Yaroslav the Wise (1019–54).

Historians have multiple interpretations of the origin of the symbol, including a falcon, an arched bow, the Holy Trinity, or an anchor.

[5] Depictions of a flying falcon with a Christian cross above its head have been found in Old Ladoga, the first seat of the Kievan Rurik dynasty,[6] of Scandinavian lineage.

At least 36 units of the Italian Army carry the Tryzub in their Coat of Arms, as they were awarded a Medal for Military Valor during their service on the territory of Ukraine.

A three-fingered hand salute is sometimes used to mimic the Tryzub;[13][14] as for example in pro-independence demonstrations in the late 1980s and in the logo of the (Ukrainian) Svoboda party.

There is an image of a monarch on a throne, and on the reverse, an armed horseman holding a shield with a lion on his hind leg, an example of equestrian seals common in Europe at the time.

At the end of World War I and dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the Western Ukrainian People's Republic revived the coat of arms.

With the annexation of the West Ukraine by Poland again in 1918 and later the Soviet Union, the gold lion symbol became the coat of arms for the city of Lviv.

George Narbut used baroque elements and heraldic signs - the trident and coat of arms of the Kyiv Magistrate of the times of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the form of a crossbow.

So the trident became a popular symbol and eventually turned into a small coat of arms of the Ukrainian People's Republic.

The horizontal lines (in heraldry called bars) could perhaps have been inspired by the partitions per fess in the coat of arms of Hungary, to which the territory had belonged.

In 1917, President of the Central Rada Mykhailo Hrushevsky proposed the Great Coat of Arms in the form of a single shield topped by a dove with olive branch.

At its center there was a smaller shield depicting a plough as a symbol of productive peaceful work surrounded by ancient state symbols of Ukraine: the princely arms of Vladimir the Great or Volodymyr the Great (tryzub), Litvin Pogon with a golden lion, cossack with musket, the crossbow of Kyiv and the lion of Lviv.

[21] On 25 August 2020 the Verkhovna Rada instructed the Shmyhal Government to get an official Great Coat of Arms of Ukraine adopted in time for the 30th anniversary of Ukrainian independence.

[21] On the day of the 30th anniversary of Ukrainian independence, 24 August 2021, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a law in its first reading that establishes an official Great Coat of Arms of Ukraine with 257 votes.