June 9th, 2006
Origins of the @ Sign
We found this on a section of the Hewlett Packard website and have no idea who wrote it or where it came from, so we cannot credit the author. We also have no idea why anyone at HP is writing about @ signs instead of making better printers. But the topic was interesting, so why not…
A History of the @ Sign
Let’s go back to the 6th or 7th century. Latin scribes tried to save a little effort by shortening the Latin word ad (at, to, or toward) by stretching the upstroke of “d” and curving it over the “a”.
Italian researchers unearthed 14th-century documents, where the @ sign represented a measure of quantity. The symbol also appeared in a 15th-century Latin-Spanish dictionary, defined as a gauge of weight, and soon after—according to ancient letters—was referenced as an amphora, a standard-sized clay vessel used to carry wine and grain.
Over the next few hundred years our plucky @ sign was used in trade to mean “at the price of” before resting on the first Underwood typewriter keyboard in 1885, then later rubbing symbolic shoulders with QWERTY on modern keyboards in the 1940s.
Then, one day in late 1971, computer engineer Ray Tomlinson grappled with how to properly address what would be history’s very first e-mail. After 30 seconds of intense thought, he decided to separate the name of his intended recipient and their location by using the “@” symbol. He needed something that wouldn’t appear in anyone’s name, and settled on the ubiquitous symbol, with the added bonus of the character representing the word “at,” as in, hey_you@wherever_you_happen_to_work.com.
And while in the English language, we know it as the “at symbol,” it goes by many other unusual pseudonyms throughout the world.
* In South Africa, it means “monkey’s tail”
* In Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia it’s the “Crazy”
* In the Czech Republic, it’s “pickled herring”
* The Danish refer to it as “alpha-sign,” “elephant’s trunk,” or “pig’s tail.”
* The French often refer to it as “little snail.”
* In Greece, it’s “little duck.”
* In Hungary, it’s called “maggot”
* In Mandarin Chinese, it’s the “mouse sign.”
* The Poles say “little cat” or “pig’s ear.”
* Russians often refer to it as “little dog.”
* There’s no official word for it in Thailand, but “wiggling worm-like character.”
* The Turks lovingly describe it as “ear.”
Source: HP
We Say: @’s crazy! (See Croatia)
SanderJK says:
Just for reference, the nickname “monkeytail” is also widely used in the Netherlands. (Though it seems to have been receding somewhat due to the length of the word (Apenstaartje) compared to “at”.
June 9th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
Dresden says:
In Ohio we call it the “taint”.
/truestory
June 9th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
desp says:
No, in Poland the @ sign isn’t called “little cat” or “pig’s ear”, it’s called “monkey”.
June 9th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
Ben says:
In Israel, the symbol is called a “shtrudel” (because it resembles a pastry).
June 9th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
fiftywattplexi says:
I have the unfortunate experience of working in the tech industry around Seattle, WA. Having done a lot of tech support over the phone, I have heard it all. One thing that I continually run into, is the misinterpretation of the ‘@’ symbol. I find a disturbing amount of people think it is called Ampersand, which means ‘and’ and is the ‘&’ symbol. Just today some poor schmuck read me an email address as ‘poorschmuckANDcrappydomain.com’. It shouldn’t bother me but it makes me wanna choke somebody.
June 9th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Bob says:
Apparently in Ohio they don’t know what the “taint” is… but they are from Ohio so you can’t expect that much!
June 9th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
George Bailey says:
I thought *all* of the Thai alphabet was wiggly-worm characters.
June 9th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Alice says:
I hate the ampersand mixup too. Like “bob smith ampersand aol.com.” Makes me nuts.
June 9th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Len says:
The correct name for it (which the author didn’t mention even after all that rambling) is the ‘arobase’.
June 9th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
Matt says:
In Soviet Russia, @ sign calls YOU “little dog”!
June 9th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Shane says:
I heard it called “the Bung” before too.
June 9th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
phr3ak9x says:
In Texas we call it the “Who gives a sh*t” symbol… just put the lil fu*ker in and call it a day!
June 9th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
JanoC says:
In Czech (and my native Slovak) this symbol is frequently called “zavinac” (pronounced “zavinatsch”). That word means also the pickled herring, however it is used for anything that is rolled up (as a carpet or pancake - “zavinuty” means “rolled up”) - the fillets of herring are sold in such way there too. Therefore the use of the word for the @ symbol
June 9th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
David says:
In Ohio _nobody_ calls it the taint. We call it the “at” sign or symbol like all modern humans. Dresden is a liar from Michigan.
June 9th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
El Rockwell says:
In R.i.Phx, AZ we call it “The Bellyhole” since it looks like a fat guys belly button complete with long, protruding hair.
http://www.myspace.com/elrockwell
June 9th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Meaghan says:
I know exactly what a ‘taint’ is and I’m from Ohio. So don’t knock the majority of us because a few are not the brightest crayon in the box.
PS - I’ve just called it ‘the at sign’.
June 9th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Torbjörn says:
In Sweden it’s called “snabel-a”; “trunk-a”, as in “elephant trunk”
June 9th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
ant says:
Where I live we call it a/an @.
I spelled it phonetically so that you would know how to pronounce it. It drives me nuts when people pronounce it incorrectly. It shouldn’t bother me, but it makes me want to choke people.
June 9th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
Smokefoot says:
Wikipedia has this as a list of alternate names for @:
about; acosta; ampersat or asperand (compare ampersand); amphora; ape; apothrope; arobase; atgry; atmark; cabbage; cat; cinnabun or cinnamon bun; commercial symbol; cyclone; each; mercantile symbol; rose; schnable; scroll or scroll-a; snail; strudel; these; vortex; whirlpool; chisignuh; whishi-whishi; yurming; or whorl
June 9th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
aint taint says:
a taint is the spot between your number 1 and you number 2 keys.
June 9th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
1337 HaXXor says:
In Norway ve kall itt the alfakrøll(curlyalpha)Bork Bork!
June 9th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
21 says:
asperand
June 9th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
@wl says:
@RLY?
June 9th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
Mirko says:
In French, @ is arobas.
June 9th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Some Printer says:
In printing markup (you know, the old days with the job cases containing lead moveable type), this is known as a “per” or “at each”.
June 9th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
Buby says:
In the spanish language, its called “arroba”.
June 9th, 2006 at 8:00 pm
Spandex Ballet says:
H@! H@!
[:))
Listen to a French guy say arobase sometime!
June 9th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
Brian says:
Koreans call it “kol-benggi” which is a type of snail.
June 10th, 2006 at 2:36 am
jen says:
Hey I’m from Ohio too. I have NEVER heard ANYONE call that a taint. AT sign - thats all I have heard it called. Ever.
I think taint guy must come from Cleveland: the taint of ohio.
(And I know what a taint is, thank you.)
June 10th, 2006 at 6:52 am
Frenchy says:
Israel? What’s that?
June 10th, 2006 at 7:48 am
Ray says:
I’m from Ohio also. I’ve never heard of “taint”. I would say the most reasonable explanation for this controversy is that Ohio is a microcosm of the country, hence the variety of language and thought.
June 10th, 2006 at 8:26 am
Bob says:
I work with a guy from the former Yugoslavia who calls it the “monkey sign.”
June 10th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
Ken says:
Len, as far as I can tell, you are incorrect. “Arobase” is the French name for it. Which, by no stretch of the imagination, makes it the proper English name.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=commercial%20at
From what I have derived from searching the web, the closest thing it has to a “proper” English name is “commercial at”. This is, after all, the most common American historical usage (other than the last 30 years or so, that is).
June 10th, 2006 at 11:56 pm
OffBeatMammal says:
which just goes to prove how screwed up communications is.
oh, and #19 just goes to prove how useless Wikipedia can be
June 11th, 2006 at 3:29 am
supercrush says:
I’ve always known it as the “ascap” symbol. -USA
June 11th, 2006 at 7:30 pm
MadMx says:
As mentioned before the most common nick for @ in Sweden is “trunk a”, but “Cinnamon Bun” (the wellknown and welltasting cake) was almost as popular just a few years ago. In swedish it is mentioned as “Kanelbulle”.
June 12th, 2006 at 12:31 am
Erin says:
I agree, the folks at Hewlett Packard should be focused on making better hardware and leave the linguistics up to the experts at NetLingo.com — check it out:
http://www.netlingo.com/lookup.cfm?term=%40
June 12th, 2006 at 7:24 am
Bruno says:
In Portuguese this character is called “arroba”, which is also the name of a weight measuring unit for wich the character can be used as a symbol: 1@ = 1 arroba = 15Kg, 2@ = 30Kg, and so on.
I don’t know if the name of the weight unit comes from the name of the character or if it’s the other way around - in fact, this isn’t a commonly used weight unit, it’s mostly used for cattle, I believe.
And yes, it seem to me that saying “name at domain dot com” is WAY easier than “name arroba domain ponto com”, but what can you do?
June 12th, 2006 at 9:22 am
Arthur Earle says:
@, commercial at, or each, as in 10@5 = 50 was common use fifty years ago. The symbol is e with the crossbar curled into an a. so it’s ea an abbreviation for each. Since ‘at’ can have the same meaning, it was sometimes read that way, but email took at to mean place as in ‘at home’. So that’s what it is.
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I might add this to http://www.tech-rant.com/
July 30th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Talia says:
In Israel (in Hebrew) it’s strudel - a danish.
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