What is the name of the end icon in English. How the @ symbol is called in different countries

In the 1990s, when the @ sign was first tried to be translated into Russian, there were many equal variants - "krakozyabra", "squiggle", "frog", "ear" and others. True, at the present time they have practically disappeared, and the "dog" has spread throughout the Runet and remained, because any language seeks to have only one universal word to denote anything. The rest of the names remain marginal, although there may be a lot of them. For example, in English, the @ symbol is called not only commercial at, but also mercantile symbol, commercial symbol, scroll, arobase, each, about, etc. Where did the association between the main computer icon and a person's friend come from? For many, the @ symbol does indeed resemble a curled up dog.

There is an exotic version that the abrupt pronunciation of English at may resemble a dog barking. However, a much more likely hypothesis links our symbol to the very old computer game Adventure. In it, you had to travel through the labyrinth, fighting with various unpleasant underground creatures. Since the game was text-based, the player himself, the walls of the labyrinth, monsters and treasures were designated by various symbols (for example, the walls were built from "!", "+" And "-"). The player in Adventure was accompanied by a dog that could be sent on recon missions. It was designated by the @ symbol. Perhaps, it was thanks to this now forgotten computer game that the name “dog” took root in Russia.

In today's world, the @ sign is everywhere, especially since it became an integral part of an email address. But this symbol long before the computer era was included in the layout of the standard American typewriter, and it became a computer only because it was relatively little used. The @ sign is used in commercial calculations — at the rate. Let's say 10 gallons of oil at $ 3.95 per gallon would be abbreviated as 10 gal of oil @ $ 3.95 / gal. In English-speaking countries, the symbol is also used in science in the meaning "at": for example, the density of 1.050 g / cm at 15 ° C will be written: 1.050 g / cm @ 15 ° C. In addition, the @ sign is loved and often used by anarchists due to its similarity with their symbol - "A in a circle".

However, its original origins are shrouded in mystery. From the point of view of the linguist Ullman, the @ symbol was invented by medieval monks to abbreviate the Latin ad (“on,” “in,” “in relation,” and so on), which closely resembles its current use. Another explanation is given by the Italian scientist Giorgio Stabile - he discovered this symbol in the records of the Florentine merchant Francesco Lapi for 1536 in the meaning of "amphora": for example, the price of one @ wine. Interestingly, the Spanish and Portuguese refer to the symbol in emails as "amphora" (arroba) - a word that the French, distorting, turned into arobase. However, in different countries there are very different names for the @ symbol, most often zoological. Poles call him "monkey", Taiwanese - "mouse", Greeks - "duck", Italians and Koreans - "snail", Hungarians - "worm", Swedes and Danes - "elephant trunk", Finns - "cat's tail" or " the sign of meow ”, and the Armenians, like us, are“ doggie ”. There are gastronomic names - "strudel" in Israel and "rollmops" (marinated herring) in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In addition, this symbol is often referred to simply as "crooked A", or "A with a curl", or, like the Serbs, "nutty A". However, the most amazing of modern stories associated with the @ symbol occurred in China, where the sign is banally called "A in a circle." A few years ago, a Chinese couple gave such a name to their newborn. Perhaps the sign began to be perceived as a hieroglyph symbolizing technological progress, and they decided that it would bring happiness and success to the young inhabitant of the Middle Power.

Hello site readers! Many people know the catch phrase “ What kind of dog is this?”From the movie“ Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession ”.

Today we will talk about another "dog" - a computer symbol " @ ”, With which all Internet users are familiar by their addresses.

And really, terribly interesting - where did such an unusual icon come from, why is it needed, why is it so interesting and even funny named?

Often, the origins of common things are shrouded in fog due to long periods of time and a lack of surviving evidence and documents.

In relation to the computer dog, everything is pretty well known and reliably proven.

• The symbol in the form of a capital letter outlined with an unfinished circle "a" has long been used and is still used in the field of international commerce.
• The @ sign is an abbreviation for the English phrase “ at the rate of"In payment documents with the meaning" at the price per piece”.
• In the general accounting sense, the English “ at"Can be translated as" in the account so and so”.

For some reason, the creators of the Internet decided to use accounting terminology when registering users in various services. This, in general, is quite logical, registration is an entry in the Book of Accounting.

So it is also logical that in the fall of 1971, one of the inventors of email, Ray Samuel Tomlinson, came up with the use of the “@” sign to indicate the postal domain in an email address.

Useful for travelers and tourists. In European countries, traffic signs with the “@” symbol indicate public Internet access points.

Why @ is called a dog

There are several legends about why @ was named a dog. The following three versions seem to be the most reliable.

1. The picture above shows the logo of one of the progenitors of the modern world wide web - Fidonet. As you can see, the nose of the sketchy pet is indicated by the at symbol in the circle.
2. Another version looks even more believable. At a time when the graphical interface had not yet been invented, a computer game called Adventure was popular. One of the characters was a scout dog, marked with an @ sign in the playing field.
3. The third version looks far-fetched, but is still widespread. On one of the first Soviet personal computers, the DCK, this symbol served as a startup screen. Allegedly, users saw in this squiggle a dog curled up in a ball. However, for such an interpretation it is necessary to have a fairly developed imagination.

How to pronounce dog icon in English and other languages

In the Russian language, the practice has developed to call the symbol “@” “dog” or “doggy”. The email address will be read with the following phrase.

• “Username Dog Mail (Gmail, Yandex) Tochka Ru (or Kom)”.
• In economics and commerce, accounting, the @ ligature is pronounced and described traditionally as “commercial at” or “commercial at”.

It is noteworthy that American engineers, who proved themselves to be true masters in inventing various creative nicknames to denote technical terms, this time behaved surprisingly passively and indifferently.

In Anglo-Saxon computer terminology, "doggy" is called "commercial ET", without any reference to funny pets.

Pronounced @ in English is also without any frills.

• [email protected]
• "Username At mail dot ru"

It remains to conclude that this time the national American pragmatism worked. Our overseas partners decided that commercial at quite adequately reflects the meaning of the symbol.

• "Account so-and-so, From mail domain so-and-so."

In some countries of the world @ also has cool nicknames, like ours.

• "Dog" - in the countries of the former USSR.
• "Monkey" - in Bulgarian, German, Polish.
• "Snail" - in Ukrainian, Italian.

In countries where the @ ligature was known long before the advent of computers, the old pronunciation of “at” or “commercial at” remained. These include France, Spain and the UK.

How to type the @ symbol on the keyboard

There is no single answer for all occasions. The problem is that there are many types of keyboards and different types of character layouts.

The picture above shows a classic keyboard with “big keys” and a traditional layout. Qwerty in Latin or QWERTY in Cyrillic.

To enter @ on such a keyboard, you must switch to the Latin font mode and simultaneously press the Shift and the number “ 2 ”.

What if there is no dog symbol on the keyboard?

In this case, there may be options.

• Switch to symbolic keyboard. Switching can be done with Alt keys, asterisk “*”, or with a special switch Smbl.
• On mobile devices, smartphones and tablets, there is simply a huge number of very different keyboards. Some are specially designed for instant messengers and on such keyboards the dog symbol is implemented, for convenience and speed of typing addresses, as a separate key on the main layout.
• Most touch keyboards for mobile devices insert the “@” sign in the same way as external keyboards for desktops and laptops.

What if I can't find the @ symbol on my keyboard?

It happens. Then you should refer to the "Table of Symbols", access to which is in the list of "Standard Programs" OS Windows.

Logically, the "dog" can be inserted through the "Insert" - "Symbols" menu in a text editor.

Email Mile Icon

The dog symbol is part of the officially registered trademark and brand logo.

I must say, a very successful and profitable acquisition from a marketing point of view.

1. First, the @ sign is quite naturally associated with an email service.
2. Secondly, the symbol is known to everyone, is popular, so its use as a designation for various products and services of the Mail.ru holding always attracts attention and increases the number of customers. This means that business profits are also growing.

All Mail.ru products are marked with a computer dog icon.

• Email service.
• Messenger Mail.ru Agent.
• Browser Amigo with Mail.ru search (capital “a” without a circle).

It's amazing how many interesting and even unusual things are hidden behind all the familiar “computer dog”.

On the Internet, the well-known symbol "dog" is used as a separator between the name of a given user and the name of the domain (host) in the syntax of e-mail addresses.

Notoriety

Some Internet figures consider this symbol to be a signature of the common human communication space and one of the most popular signs in the whole world.

One of the evidence of the worldwide recognition of this designation can be called the fact that in 2004 (February) the International Telecommunication Union introduced into the common special code for designation @. It combines the codes of two C and A, which reflects their joint graphic writing.

History of the dog symbol

The Italian researcher Giorgio Stabile was able to find in the archives owned by the Institute of Economic History in the city of Prato (which is near Florence), a document in which this sign is first encountered in writing. Such an important testimony turned out to be a letter from a merchant from Florence, which was subsidized as early as 1536.

It refers to three merchant ships that arrived in Spain. The vessels' cargo included containers in which wine was transported, marked with the @ sign. After analyzing the data on the price of wine, as well as on the capacity of various medieval vessels, and comparing the data with the general system of measures used at that time, the scientist concluded that the @ sign was used as a special measuring unit that replaced the word anfora (translated "amphora"). This is how the universal measure of volume was called since ancient times.

Berthold Ullman's theory

Berthold Ullman is an American scientist who suggested that the @ symbol was developed by medieval monks in order to shorten the common word ad of Latin origin, which was often used as a universal term meaning "in relation", "in", "on".

It should be noted that in French, Portuguese and Spanish, the name of the designation comes from the term "arroba", which in turn denotes the Old Spanish measure of weight (about 15 kg), abbreviated in the letter with the @ symbol.

Modernity

Many people are interested in the name of the "dog" symbol. Note that the official modern name of this symbol sounds like "commercial at" and originates from the accounts in which it was used in the following context: [email protected]$ 2each = $ 14. This can be translated as 7 pieces of $ 2 = $ 14

Since the dog symbol was used in business, it was placed on the keyboards of all typewriters. He even attended "Underwood", which was released back in 1885. It was only after 80 long years that the first computer keyboards inherited the dog symbol.

Internet

Let's turn to the official history of the World Wide Web. She claims that the Internet dog symbol in e-mail addresses originated from an American engineer and computer scientist named Ray Tomlinson, who in 1971 managed to send the first ever e-mail message across the network. In this case, the address had to be composed of two parts - the name of the computer through which the registration was made, and the username. Tomilson chose the "dog" character on the keyboard as a separator between the specified parts, since it was not part of either computer names or usernames.

Versions of the origin of the famous name "dog"

There are several possible versions of the origin of such a funny name in the world. First of all, the badge really looks a lot like a curled up dog.

In addition, the abrupt sound of the word at (the symbol for a dog in English is read this way) resembles a bit of a dog barking. It should also be noted that with a good imagination, you can see in the symbol almost all the letters that are part of the word "dog", except perhaps, excluding "k".

However, the following legend can be called the most romantic. A long time ago, in that good time, when all computers were very large, and screens were purely text-based, there was one popular game in the virtual kingdom, which got a name that reflects its content - "Adventure" (Adventure).

Its meaning was to travel through a maze created by a computer in search of various treasures. There were, of course, battles with underground harmful creatures. The maze on the display was drawn using the symbols "-", "+", "!", And the player, hostile monsters and treasures were designated by various icons and letters.

Moreover, according to the plot, the player was friends with a faithful helper - a dog, who could always be sent for reconnaissance in the catacombs. That one was designated just by the @ sign. Was this the root cause of the now generally accepted name, or, on the contrary, was the icon chosen by the developers of the game, because it was already called that? The legend does not give answers to these questions.

What is the name of the virtual "dog" in other countries?

It is worth noting that in our country the symbol "dog" is also called a ram, an ear, a bun, a frog, a dog, and even a mallard. In Bulgaria, it is "maymunsko a" or "klomba" (monkey A). In the Netherlands - apenstaartje. In Israel, the sign is associated with a whirlpool (strudel).

The Spanish, French and Portuguese call the designation in the same way as the measure of weight (respectively: arroba, arrobase and arrobase). If you ask about the meaning of the dog symbol among the inhabitants of Poland and Germany, they will answer you that it is a monkey, a paper clip, a monkey's ear or a monkey's tail. It is considered a snail in Italy, calling it chiocciola.

The least poetic names were given to the symbol in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, calling it "snout a" (snabel-a) or elephant's tail (tailed a). The most appetizing name can be considered a variant of the Czechs and Slovaks, who consider the sign to be a herring under a fur coat (rollmops). The Greeks also associate with the cuisine, calling the designation "little pasta".

For many it is still a monkey, namely for Slovenia, Romania, Holland, Croatia, Serbia (maјmun; alternative: "crazy A"), Ukraine (alternatives: snail, doggie, dog). The term Lithuania (eta - "eta", borrowing with the addition of a Lithuanian morpheme at the end) and Latvia (et - "et") were borrowed from the English language. The variant of the Hungarians, where this cute sign became a tick, can be disheartening.

Finland (cat's tail), America (cat), Taiwan and China (mouse) play cat and mouse. Residents of Turkey (rose) turned out to be romantics. And in Vietnam this badge is called "crooked A".

Alternative hypotheses

It is believed that the name of the designation "dog" in Russian speech appeared thanks to the famous DCK computers. In them, the "dog" appeared during computer boot. Indeed, the designation resembled a small dog. All DVK users, without saying a word, came up with a name for the symbol.

It is curious that the original spelling of the Latin letter "A" was supposed to decorate it with curls, thus it was very similar to the current spelling of the "doggy" sign. The translation of the word "dog" into the Tatar language sounds like "et".

Where else can you find a "dog"?

There are a number of services that use this symbol (besides email):

HTTP, FTP, Jabber, Active Directory. In IRC, the symbol is placed before the name of the channel operator, for example @oper.

The sign is also widely used in the main programming languages. In Java, it is used to declare annotation. In C #, it is needed to escape characters in a string. The operation of taking an address is appropriately denoted in Pascal. For Perl, this is an array identifier, and in Python, accordingly, a decorator declaration. The field identifier for an instance of a class is a Ruby sign.

As for PHP, here the "doggie" is used in order to suppress the output of an error, or to warn about a task that has already occurred at the time of execution. The symbol became the prefix for indirect addressing in MCS-51 assembler. In XPath, it is shorthand for the attribute axis, which selects a set of attributes for the current element.

Finally, Transact-SQL assumes that the local variable name must begin with @ and the global variable name must begin with @. In DOS, thanks to the symbol, echo is suppressed for the executable command. The designation of an action like echo off mode is usually used before entering mode to prevent a specific command from being printed to the screen (for clarity: @echo off).

So we looked at how many aspects of virtual and real life depend on an ordinary symbol. However, let's not forget that it became the most recognizable thanks to the emails that are sent in thousands every day. We can assume that today you will receive a letter with a "dog", and it will bring only good news.

As a child, we were taught to recognize the letters of our native language and most of the common mathematical signs and punctuation marks, such as dashes, hyphens -, quotation marks "", brackets () (), etc. However, we often come across signs, the meaning of which is unknown to us. In this article we will talk about the name of a sign that you can often meet in a letter, but cannot understand its purpose.

Characters on the keyboard

First, let's talk about the signs that you can often find in typographic texts and on the web. They are located on your keyboard.

The name comes from two English words: hash - hash, tag - label. This mark is placed next to a word or phrase in a blog or social network and serves to identify a specific topic to which a post, photo or video posted on the Internet relates. For example, if you posted a photo of a puppy on your blog, you can add hashtags #puppy, #dog, #cute, etc. And if another user wants to see photos of puppies, he just needs to enter the hashtag #puppy in the search, and he will be able to see both yours and hundreds of other photos with puppies marked with the corresponding hashtag.

• & - Ampersand. This sign is used to denote a conjunction or, more simply, it replaces the conjunction "and". Surprisingly, this sign was first used before our era. It acquired active distribution in the 8th century. first in handwritten texts, and from the middle of the 15th century. - in printed matter and was used to increase the recording speed and compress the volumes of the written text. It is used for the same purpose to this day.
• / - Slash, forward slash in computer science. This sign belongs to the category of non-letter spelling signs along with the apostrophe (") and the hyphen (-). According to the current established norms of the Russian language, it can be used to indicate the relationship of any quantities or parameters to each other (serves as an analogue of the fraction sign and denotes division ); can replace the union "and" and "or"; and can also be used in various abbreviations (railway - railway).
• * - An asterisk, an asterisk. The scope of such a sign is very extensive. Here are just the basics: used to create a footnote or comment in a text; three asterisks in a row delimit incoherent text passages and can replace headings or titles; several asterisks in a row replace an unprintable word; also asterisks are used to replace proper names in the text, which should not be known to the reader or which have no meaning for the narrative thread, etc.

Diacritical marks

Separately, it is worth talking about such a phenomenon as diacritical marks. These are symbols that are used in typography to change the usual style of a sign, or are used in linguistics to indicate that a certain letter of the alphabet is not read according to general rules.

The most striking examples of diacritics in modern Russian are the superscript colon above the letter "ё" and the U-shaped superscript mark in the letter "y". There are not so many such signs in the Russian language. In other languages, there are much more diacritics:

• / -shaped stroke over the letter (á);
• \ -shaped stroke above the letter (à);
• cap over the letter (â, zh͡j);
• a bird over the letter (ž, ě);
• // above the letter (ő, ű);
• \ over the letter (ѷ);
• superscript circle (å);
• superscript point (i, j, ṁ);
• tilde over the letter (ã, ñ);
• line over the letter (ā);
• apostrophe (a ");
• titlo (a҃);
• colon after letter (a :);
• various tails on top, bottom and sides of letters (Ҙ, Ȩ, Ҳ, Ҭ, ɦ, Ơ, Ư), etc.

Ampersand is a graphic abbreviation for the Latin union et (and).

In Russian, the word ampersand is recognized only by the Lopatinsky Russian Spelling Dictionary. It is almost impossible to find references to the sign in the literature of the pre-computer era due to its extremely rare use in the Cyrillic set. In "Brief information on printing business" (St. Petersburg: 1899) it is called "a sign replacing the union" and ", in the" Handbook of a printing technologist "(Moscow: 1981) -" a conjunction sign ".

The authorship of the ampersand is attributed to Marcus Tullius Tyrone, a devoted slave and secretary of Cicero. Even after Tyrone became a freedman, he continued to write down Cicero texts. And by 63 BC. e. invented his own system of abbreviations to speed up writing, called "Tyronean signs" or "Tyronean notes" (Notæ Tironianæ, the originals have not survived), which were used until the 11th century (so at the same time Tyrone is also considered the founder of Roman shorthand).

Ampersand has been actively used by scribes since the second half of the 8th century, and by typographers from the middle of the 15th century.

Curiously, & is used not only in Latin texts, but literally in all European books - in English, French, Italian.
For example, in italian:
Almost all transitional forms are visible between the absurdly curved ampersand on the left and the ordinary one on the right. The typesetter at the checkout had different types of & characters so that the stripe would not ripple in the eyes.

Sometimes (due to poverty), in the absence of an ampersand in some font, it was sculpted from improvised means - say, from eights and With. The result was a smiley like "very surprised Taras Bulba":
Evolution of Ampersand
When pronouncing the alphabet, before the letters, which, in addition to sounds, were also words, they pronounced per se (Latin by itself). They said, for example: and, per se I, so as not to confuse the letter with the pronoun "I".

The last one was &, about which they said: and, per se and (and, in itself “and”). Such a construction simply had to become more adapted to frequent and quick pronunciation, and already in 1837 the word ampersand (isamapasei) was recorded in dictionaries.