Undoubtedly for about the last two decades or so you have seen the @ symbol daily, but do you know it's history? When I was composing an email earlier that very question came to mind. Where did our curly-cued little friend come from?
What is it's real name?
The little symbol we know to mean “at” is purely an invention of English-speaking peoples. In other cultures the little fellow has many different names, usually relating to it's odd shape. People in South Africa call it a “aapstert,” which translates to “monkies tail.” In Czech it is ferered to as “zavinac” meaning pickled herring. Danish people have named it “snabel” which is translated to “elephant's trunk.” My personal favorite is one of the names the Dutch have given to the @ symbol, “apeklootje” meaning “little monkey's testicle.”
Where did it come from?
It seems little is known about the character's history but there are a few good theories. One is that the origin lies with Medieval monks. When transcribing text they often looked for ways to save a few pen strokes. The word “at” occurred often enough that they would loop the “t” around the “a” making a symbol resembling @.
Another possible origin is that @ was used as an abbreviation of the word amphora, which was a unit of measurement. An Itailian scholar found the symbol in a letter written by a Florentine trader named Francesco Lapi in 1536. It's highly possible some buisness man saw the symbol in a book transcribed by the monks and decided to use it to abbreviate “amphora.”
Modern History.
The first typewriter, made in 1885 included the symbol on it's keyboard. Raymond Tomlinson, one of the programmers who created e-mail, used it to separate the user name from the server address in the first email ever sent. It is this use that made the little guy a superstar, and prompted the curiosity that lead to the research for this very article.
The little curly-cued bugger has truly risen to super-star status in the computer age. It's storied history even prompted one Chinese family to attempt to name the child “@.” Move over, Prince!
References:
History of the “at” symbol @ commercial at - “http://www.atsymbol.com/history.htm”
At sign – Wikipedia - “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign”
Chinese parents choose to name their baby @ - “http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1560600/Chinese-parents-choose-to-name-their-baby-.html”
A Natural History of the @ sign: Part One - “http://www.herodios.com/atsign.htm”
Comments
Great read!
Love information like this. Thanks
I enjoy learning origins of stuff, thanks!
Very interesting! I have always been curious. Thanks :)
Here in Honduras, Central America the "@" is called "arroba", very similar to the Italian word "amphora", and it was originally used as a measurement for coffe and/or corn grains...
I'm Dutch and I've NEVER heard anyone use the term "apeklootje"... It's Apestaartje (Similar to the Afrikaans, who undoubtedly got it from Dutch).
As mentioned above, in the netherlands we say ''apenstaartje'' (monkey's tail), I've never heard anyone say 'apenklootje'.....
Great little article.
But in Danish we actually call it an elephant trunck and not tail ;)
@Morten-yes, right. That was actually a typo I missed in the proof-read. I fixed it accordingly. Thanks. As for those of you who said they have not heard "apenklootje" used, I'm sure it is not common, but I just couldn't resist including it when I read that. Hell, we don't really even have a name for it other than "the 'at' symbol, or "commercial at" so you have us beat for creativity either way.
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