Does the symbol @ have a name? If not, any suggestions? | Notes and Queries

Does the symbol @ have a name? If not, any suggestions?

• IN ITALIAN the symbol is known as a chiocciola (snail). Geoffrey Allen, Pavia, Italy.

• I heard someone on Radio 4 refer to it as an "e-snail" which I thought was nice.

  Chris Winchester, London

• @ abbreviates more than just two letters. I remember it on signs in shop windows when I was a child in the early 60s e.g. Cabbages @ 3d, and on similarly on bills. It saves you writing 'at' and 'each'.

  Anne Lane, Greenwich

• I have heard it called "petit escargot" ("little snail") in France.

  Katherine Ellis, London

• I've always known it to be called the "short at".

  Henry Wolny, London

• The French have a word for it: arobasse. I can't find it in the dictionary but it does seem to have gained widespread acceptance. Quite an achievement in a country where hardly anyone knows (or cares about) the word for "ampersand".

  Rudiger Scheister, Paris

• In Spain, we call it "arroba", which also is a measurement of weight, but I can't see the conection. ( 1 arroba = 15 kilos )

  Maria, Toledo, Spain

• How about calling it "letter a with a curly tail"? Do I win a fiver?

  Charlie Peterson, York

• In Finland, apparently, it is called miukumauku because it looks like a sleeping cat.

  Andrew, Norwich UK

• Small "a" in circle @ Please can any one let me know what this sign called ~ ? my E-mail address is Bigbook2601@yahoo.com thank you.

  Ab, Chicago U.S.A

• It's the AT symbol and leave it @ that! :-)

  Kat, California, USA

• Printers on this side of the pond referred to it as a "commercial at," just as the ampersand was a "commercial and."

  Howard Wolff, West Orange, NJ, USA

• If it wasn't just the "at" symbol I'm sure somebody would have told us by now. My favourite from the foreign versions is the Czech one meaning a rolled pickled herring. Perhaps we could latch onto that one and call it a "rollmop".

  John Kemplen, Leighton Buzzard, England, UK

• In American computer science, it is universally referred to as the "at sign", or "at" when reading out a sequence of characters or an email address. In Chinese, it's called a mouse (shu), confusingly enough.

  Ethan Bradford, US

• The "~" (which somebody wanted to know the name of) is known as a tilde.

  Rod Fielding, Bury, UK

• I call it a squiggle, because it is! A swirl, wiggle of a pen and scribble all in one word. Maybe someone was twirling their pen in circles whilst thinking what to write!

  Paul Coleman, Oxford, UK

• I agree with what said before: @ means "at £ each" and the fact that we have started using in email addresses does not mean that its name as "commercial at" should be discarded, but for ease and speed of conversation in everyday exchange of email addresses we perhaps should adopt the grammatically correct version of "ampersat" which, from the semantic point of view, means "instead of (at)".

  Roberta, London london

• Growing up while in grammar school; 1960's; my teacher told us it was an abbreviation for "at each" (for)...such as 5@1.00 or 5 for 1.00. Made sense then and still does today!

  Jay, Atlanta USA

• The french word is arobase. Some are confusing the sign @ with ampersand which is not correct - ampersand is the & sign

  Marilyn, Mauritius

• First description of symbol @ is dated century IV, detailing how many "arroba" (weight measurement about 25 pounds) of a freight by seaway from Seville to Rome.

  Victor, Alsasua, Spain

• There's an awful lot of opinion on this subject floating about, but nobody seems to be citing any references. The best I can find anywhere online is at Wikipedia (but it's Wikipedia so take it with a pinch of salt!). According to whoever wrote the article, it's formal name is "commercial at". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%40

  Rawlyn, UK

• It is ASCII Code 64. Common names: at sign, strudel, rare, each, vortex, whorl, intercal, whirlpool, cyclone, snail, ape, cat, rose, cabbage, amphora. It also is used in email addresses. Ray Tomlinson was designing the first email program. It is derived from the latin preposition "ad" (at). It has been traced back to the Italian Renaissance in a Roman merchantile document signed by Francesco Lapi on 1536-05-04. In Dutch it is apestaartje (little tail), in German affenschwanz (ape tail). The French name is arobase. In Spain and Portugal it denotes a weight of about 25 pounds called arroba and the Italians call it chiocciola (snail). commercial at. (n.d.). This information is from The Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing. Retrieved April 25, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/commercial at

  Tamera, Layton USA

• In Chinese, we call it a little mouse.

  Kat Fan, Austin, Texas

• Never mind what foreigners call it, to we Brits it's simply 'at', although its use for any other purpose than to punctuate an e-mail address or to indicate per-unit pricing is the mark of laziness or of a foolish desire to seem 'modern'.

  Pete Wigens, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK

• An even more perverse use of the symbol is contained in a leaflet published by Stroud District Council, in which we are asked to 'Sign up for free email @lerts'. Aaaaargh!

  Pete Wigens, Stroud, UK

• Just spoke to someone on the phone in Bosnia. They called it 'a crazy'.

  Kimberly Rentfro, London

• It's an at mark, which is also used in T-SQL Programming to denote and define parameters and widecard programming. :)

  Steve Stephan, Jacksonville, FL, United States of America

• Ampersand is &. By defination @ is the "at symbol".

  Joe Kennedy, Glover, VT, USA

• In Nahuatl it is referred to as the: "O" otztli. In other words, the capital letter "O" pregnant. It is possibly due to the visually apparent little "o" inside the big "O".

  Waxaklahun, San Jose, California, US

• I hate how people are using @ before people's names when addressing them on the internet, because you talk 'to' someone, not 'at' them!

  Mark, VIRGINIA BEACH USA

• In Greek it's called 'papaki' which means little duck. Someone on my blog suggested recently "alfaki". I like this word very much, I think it's cute :) It means little alpha.

  Dora, Cyprus

• It is auction sign which used for rate and email addressing it is separator between user and provider name in email address

  raj, Gwalior, India

• We use that symbol for our address on the net, don't we? If someone asks you where you will be available or where you live, would you say, 'I live AT xyz'; or 'I live A WITH ELEPHANT'S TRUNK (or whatever is suggested above) xyz'?

  Gaurang, Ahmedabd India

• the symbol @ literally means 'at the rate'

  vyoma, mumbai india

• I like capital 2!

  Robin, Austin USA

• In Wales w call it the Llanciffgochgochplatricuaticinibaabaa for short. It means a little lambs tail

  mick, dublin

• In US it's usage is archaic, means or meant "at" used in sales notation to speed up a notation that refer to pricing example 3 @ 2 for $1. Three items priced at 2 for 1 dollar.

  Avery, Blythe US

• it's the "at" symbol

  Ben, Mandurah Australia

• What can I say? Israel's "strudel " usage is too wonderful. Most people see a lowercase 'a' with most of a circle around it...my people see a slice of European pastry!

  Jane, Columbia SC

• In Polish it is "małpa" = monkey. Most things you say in Polish are funny, and that is no exception, when you say: "My email is Paul monkey gmail dot com".

  Maks, Warsaw Poland

• In Romania : arond (@)

  Silvia,

• In Armenia we call it "Snik" it comes from Russian "Sabachka". Thank you all for your information.

  Lily, Yerevan, Armenia

• In Russia it also calls "sobaka" ("dog") as a "sobachka" (not "puppy" but "little dog"). But all the times I've heard all say "dog".

  Artyom Scherbakov, Moscow oblast, Istra district, Dedovsk Russia

• I like "epinota". I think this should become a universal name for @ sign. In Armenian it is called "Sh-neek" which means a little dog; just a translation of Russian "Sobachka".

  Leann, LA USA