I am having an argument with a friend about the names of some ASCII symbols. For instance, I know the "and symbol" - & - is called an ampersand. My question is: Do the "at symbol" - @ - and "number sign" - # - have names? Also, do any other commonly used symbols have less commonly used names?

# is sometimes refered to as the pound sign. I used to think @ meant about or around, in my youth before computers.

I always assumed the # was simply the hash. The pound sign is the £, I think. I don't know about many others, but I'd be interested to find out.

Rapport was established superficially.

There is plenty of previous discussion on # - hash/pound. I can't recall a name for @, though, other than "at".

I suppose its presence on the keyboard and its relative lack of use made it perfect for e-mail. Otherwise we'd all be xyz~adjklj.fjioh (~ is tilde, I think).

Gurunet reports the following:

Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon describe how the @ sign got there:
Tomlinson....became better known for a brilliant (he called it obvious) decision he made while writing [the e-mail] programs. He needed a way to separate, in the e-mail address, the name of the user from the machine the user was on. How should that be denoted? He wanted a character that would not, under any circumstances, be found in the user's name. He looked down at the keyboard he was using, a Model 33 Teletype, which almost everyone else on the Net used, too. In addition to the letters and numerals there were about a dozen punctuation marks. "I got there first, so I got to choose any punctuation I wanted," Tomlinson said. "I chose the @ sign." The character also had the advantage of meaning "at" the designated institution. He had no idea he was creating an icon for the wired world.

Not sure how old that name is. Back in th 70s we called it hatch. ! was bang.

the lads at Bell Labs thought that # should have a more distinctive name than the various pound, hash, (cross)hatch, sharp, etc. and came up with octothorpe (from its eight points and some guy named Thorpe). it hasn't caught on.

the paragraph mark ¶ is called a 'pilcrow'
the squiggle under a ç is a 'cedilla' (as in façade)
@ is more formally called the 'commercial at'
µ is the 'micron'
other names for the slash (/) are 'virgule' and 'solidus'
the backslash (\) is, of course, the 'reverse solidus'
and, finally, an old word for the ? mark is 'eroteme' (ER uh teem)

I don't know what the situation is north of the border, but here the telephone company, both the hard-wired and the cellular types, seem to have given a sort of official status to "star" for * and "pound" for #. You will hear call-back info. advising you to enter "star 69" or "pound 77" on a cell phone, and very frequently voicemail programs tell you, for instance, "Enter your telephone number followed by the pound sign." or "To end this call, press the star key."

The @ has always, so far as I know, been called "at". Before computers, it was for use in commercial contexts (hence the name "commercial 'at'") like "6 dinglefoofs @ .50" on invoices or similar documents.

Interestingly, in Spanish one never says "at" (or its Spanish equivalent..) for @. It is called an "arroba," which is also unit of measure (for both weight and liquid) that I have never heard used - my Spanish dictionary says it varies in weight from 24-2- to 36 pounds, by region, which would explain why it ain't used much.

There seems to be a parallel here, with these odd typographical symbols given names having to do with weight (# and pound and @ and arroba), perhaps because they were used as shorthand for the units (as when one sees a weight as 20#).

My Depression-era mother also utilizes the @ symbol to denote "each". Seems like a dated usage to me.

The @ means "circa"(approximately). I was very disappointed to find out that I can't use it as such in close proximity to any other typing because the "word processor" automatically assumes I'm noting an e-mail address and subsequently underlines it and changes the text color...

... I've been subsequently reappointed!

used as shorthand for the units (as when one sees a weight as 20#).
_________________________________________

Ah, but there's an instant regional problem here:

In the UK, I have never seen a weight listed as 20#, but always as 20lb. Likewise, I have always seen # referred to as 'hash'.

I suspect that this comes back to our currency being the pound, as indicated by the '£' symbol, and that as a result it would be confusing to give the same name to anything else.

In French Québec most people call the @ "commercial A."

Arroba is sometimes used by people, usually those trying to speak 'proper' French, but whomever they are talking to usually says "what" over and over until the person says "commercial A, alright, it means commercial A!" so the second person usually says "well, why didn’t you say so." Pretty aggressive lot, I’d say .

In English we just say AT and save all the hoopla.

Re @

In the dear dead days beyond recall when I was in school we were taught the @ stood for at as in "prices for each unit."
3 lipsticke @ $1 total $3.
wow

Re @

In the dear dead days beyond recall when I was in school we were taught the @ stood for at as in "prices for each unit."
3 lipsticks @ $1 total $3.
wow

re: My Depression-era mother also utilizes the @ symbol to denote "each".

I think you'll find she's simply shortened another commercial symbol. Not available on keyboard, so described as 'ea' with the a's tail looping around both letters. Very common in fruit shops in the days when they had hand written price signs stapled to broken off bits of wooden apple boxes.

stales

wooden apple boxes

Ahh. The first apple icon

The first apple icon

Good one, mav!
That reminds me--what is an applet, please?

I believe that "applet" comes from the computer term, "application," meaning a software program. An applet is a mini-program.

Some months ago Newsweek published a short article about the different names other countries gave to the symbol ‘@’.
I have forgotten most words but I remember that some of them were quite curious. I am not sure but I think that the Chinese or the Russian called it ‘the mouse’. Actually, if I try, I can see a long tail and a small body on it.
As Hyla wrote, we in Spain call it “arroba” and nobody knows who named it this way. “Arroba” is an old weight measure scarcely used today, I remember my grandfather using it referring to pigs. Some years ago a few humorists started calling it “algarroba” (carob pod) -BTW, a common feed for pigs- and now, what started as a joke, is used by a considerable number of people.
Regarding ‘#’ people try to avoid referring to it because nobody knows exactly how to call it. The most popular word is “almohadillita” (small cushion) but some people say “libra” (pound) or “chirobita” (small hump) or “rejillita” (small grate).
It would be interesting knowing how other cultures refer to those symbols.

Juan Maria.

I thought I'd mentioned this before, but I couldn't find it again, so:

A poll of my Indonesian colleagues reveals that in English they call it the at sign, and read it as at. In Indonesian they read it as at, but call it variously "a kurung" (caged or bracketed a), "a keong" (snail a), or "a kura-kura" (turtle or tortoise a).

Bingley