What is the name of the dog icon in English? What is the "@" symbol called in different countries?

In the 1990s, when they first tried to translate the @ icon into Russian, there were many equal variants - “krakozyabra”, “squiggle”, “frog”, “ear” and others. True, at present they have practically disappeared, but “dog” has spread throughout the Runet and remains, because any language strives to have only one universal word to denote anything. The remaining names remain marginal, although there may be a lot of them. For example, in English, the @ symbol is called not only by the words 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 people, the @ symbol really does resemble a curled up dog.

There is an exotic version that the abrupt pronunciation of English at can resemble the barking of a dog. However, a much more likely hypothesis connects our symbol with a very old computer game called Adventure. In it you had to travel through a labyrinth, fighting 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 made up of “!”, “+” and “-”). The player in Adventure was accompanied by a dog who could be sent on reconnaissance 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 has become an integral part of the email address. But this symbol, long before the computer era, was part of the layout of the standard American typewriter, and became a computer symbol only because it was used relatively little. The @ icon is used in commercial calculations - meaning “at the rate”. Let's say 10 gallons of oil at $3.95/gallon would be written 10 gal of oil @ $3.95/gal. In English-speaking countries, the symbol is also used in science to mean “at”: for example, a density of 1.050 g/cm at 15 °C would be written: 1.050 g/cm @ 15 °C. In addition, the @ sign is loved and often used by anarchists due to its similarity to their symbol - “A in a circle.”

However, its original origin is shrouded in mystery. According to the linguist Ullman, the @ symbol was invented by medieval monks to shorten the Latin ad ("on", "in", "in relation to", etc.), 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. It is interesting that the Spaniards and Portuguese call the symbol in emails exactly “amphora” (arroba) - a word that the French, having distorted, turned into arobase. However, in different countries there are a variety of names for the @ symbol, most often zoological. The Poles call it "monkey", the Taiwanese - "mouse", the Greeks - "duck", Italians and Koreans - "snail", Hungarians - "worm", Swedes and Danes - "elephant trunk", Finns - "cat's tail" or " sign of meow,” and Armenians, like us, signify “doggie.” There are gastronomic names - “strudel” in Israel and “rolmops” (marinated herring) in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In addition, this symbol is often simply called a "crooked A", or "A with a curl", or, like the Serbs, a "nutty A". However, the most amazing modern story related to the @ symbol occurred in China, where the sign is tritely called “A in a circle.” A few years ago, a Chinese couple gave this name to their newborn. Perhaps the sign began to be perceived as a hieroglyph symbolizing technical progress, and they decided that it would bring happiness and success to the young inhabitant of the Middle Power.

With the advent of the Internet, the @ symbol, the so-called “dog,” became known to everyone. It is on every computer and smartphone. The most common use of this sign appears when writing email.

Few people know how the “dog” sign appeared, and that it was used several centuries before the Internet appeared. And certainly almost no one knows what this symbol is actually called correctly.

This dog in Russian is correctly called commercial “et”. The term comes from the English name - commercial at. But it is difficult to pronounce this long correct name of the sign. Therefore, colloquial symbols for @ have appeared in almost all languages. And all the names are somehow related to food or animals.

Belarusians call our dog the word “slimak”, which means “snail”. And indeed, there is a similarity between @ and a snail. Ukrainians also call it “snail” - “ravlik”. And also the Italians - “chiocciola”.

The Jews came up with a tasty name for the symbol. In Ivirit the word “strudel” means roll.

Some people think the @ sign looks like a monkey. For example, in Bulgarian they say “monkey A”, in German “klammeraffe”, and in Polish “małpa”. All this is translated as “monkey”.

The Turks call the dog "et", which in their language translates as "meat". The Greeks call it "papaki" - duck. And the Kazakhs are very surprised by their imagination with the name “aikulak”, which translates as “ear of the moon”.

The languages closest to the historical meaning of the @ symbol are Spanish and French - arroba and arobase, respectively. These words denote a measure of weight.

How did the dog sign appear?

There are many hypotheses about the appearance and original meaning of the @ symbol. The most common is the origin of the word "aroba", which meant a measure of weight in some European languages in the Middle Ages. And in trade documents, aroba was written with a sign similar to our modern @.

Aroba was equal to 11.5 kg (12.5 kg in some regions). This word came to Europe from the Arabic language - “ar-rub”, which means “quarter”, that is, one fourth of one hundred pounds.

There is another hypothesis about how the dog sign appeared. In the same Middle Ages, Italy used a similar symbol that showed volume. The @ sign denoted a volume equal to one amphora.

A similar symbol was found in Rus'. In the documents, the first letter of the alphabet “az” was beautifully painted so that it looked like @.

The modern commercial name "et" appeared in English economic documents. For example, the expression 3 widgets @ $7 each = $21 means 3 widgets costing $7 each, resulting in a total of $21.

And since the symbol was used in business, this inevitably led to the fact that it appeared on typewriters, and then on computer keys.

The very word “dog” for the @ symbol most likely came from the game Adventure, in which there was a dog character, denoted by the @ sign. And if you look closely, the sign really looks like a dog curled up in a ball.

The word "monkey" most likely came from owners of eight-bit zx-spectrum computers, some of which had a button that allowed programs to be copied to disk. This process usually corrupted the program, which is why it was called monkeying. Well, the button that started the process was indicated by the @ symbol.

As we know, in the modern world, “dog” is most often found in writing emails. For example [email protected] can be understood as username on example.com. The symbol separates the username and domain name.

It is unlikely that among the Internet audience there will be a person who is unfamiliar with this @ symbol. On the web, it is used as a separator between the username and hostname in email address syntax.

Some figures in the Internet space call this symbol “one of the main pop symbols of our time, a sign of our common communication space.” Somewhat pompous, in my opinion, but the worldwide recognition of this symbol, and, as is sometimes even noted, “canonization” is evidenced by the following fact.

In February 2004, the International Telecommunication Union introduced a Morse code for the @ symbol ( - - - ) to facilitate the transmission of email addresses. The code combines the Latin letters A and C and reflects their joint graphic writing.

The search for the origins of the @ symbol takes us back at least to the 15th century, and perhaps even further, although linguists and paleographers still disagree on this issue.

Professor Giorgio Stabile put forward this hypothesis. A 16th-century document written by a Florentine merchant mentioned “the price of one A of wine” (possibly an amphora). At the same time, the letter A, according to the then tradition, was decorated with a curl and looked like @.

American scientist Berthold Ullman suggested that the @ sign was invented by medieval monks to shorten the Latin word “ad”, which was often used as a universal word meaning “on”, “in”, “in relation to”, etc. In the font that the monks used, the letter “d” was written with a small tail, and this made it look a little like the number “6” in a mirror image. So the preposition “ad” became the @ symbol.

Be that as it may, this innovation was soon adopted by traders: one of the first to use the symbol outside the walls of the monastery was the Florentine merchant Francesco Lapi, who in one of his letters designated an amphora as a “dog” - a standard measure of volume in those days, approximately equal to 26 -ty l.

In Spanish, Portuguese, and French, the name of the symbol comes from the word “arroba” - an old Spanish measure of weight, ca. 15 kg. (according to other sources 11.502 kg), which is abbreviated in writing as the @ sign.

As for the Renaissance, the @ sign began to be used to indicate price, but during the Industrial Revolution, the @ sign began to appear in accountants' reports. The modern official name of the symbol "commercial at" takes its origin from bills, for example, 7 widgets @ $2 each = $14, which translates to 7 pieces. 2$ = 14$. Since this symbol was used in business, it was placed on typewriter keyboards and from there migrated to the computer.

We owe the spread of this symbol across the Internet to the forefather of email, Tomlinson. He was the same person who chose the @ symbol.

Here we need to digress a little and enlighten you on what Tomlinson was doing and why he is considered to be the inventor of email, and at the same time the @ icon, although in fact, he did neither one nor the other. The company Tomltonson worked for became involved in the ARPANet project, a computer network for the US Department of Defense, around the late 60s. It was this network that was the predecessor of the Internet. In those years, there were already several programs that were capable of transferring a file or message from one person to another. But the sender and recipient needed to use the same computer. As for the modem, even the fastest one at that time worked about 200 times slower than a modern modem, which allows you to download information at a speed of 56.6 Kbps.

Tomlinson was at that time developing an email program and creating a virtual mailbox. In fact, the email box of that time was a file that differed from the usual one only in one feature - users did not have the opportunity to correct the sent text, but only add something of their own. In such an operation, only two programs were used - SNDMSG to send the file and READMAIL to read it.

Tomlinson wrote a new program, which consisted of 200 lines of code. This program was a cross between the two above-mentioned programs and the CPYNET protocol, which was used in ARPANet to send files to a remote computer. Tomlinson's first experimental message was sent from one computer in the laboratory to another.

In order to send the file, Tomlinson spent about six months until he was able to edit the message to a computer that could actually be considered deleted.

Of course, not many people knew about Tomlinson’s success, only a circle of colleagues, since the merit was not highlighted anywhere.

Well, now we can return to the “dog”. Tomlinson used a 33 Teletype keyboard. And one day he needed a rather unique symbol that had not been widely used before. Such a character should not appear in any title or name, and it should also separate the user name and computer name. There should have been an algorithm based on the type of name - symbol - place.

In addition to numbers and letters, the keyboard had punctuation marks, as well as @. But after 1971, the keyboard model underwent changes.

@ was the simplest solution to this algorithm. As Tomlinson himself stated, this was the only option. When asked much later why he chose this particular icon, he replied simply: “I was looking for a character on the keyboard that could not appear in any name and cause confusion.”

Clickable

In 1963, the ASCII standard encoding appeared, among the 95 printed characters of which there was also a “dog”, and in 1973, members of the Internet Engineering Taskforce organization consolidated the use of the sign when separating a name and a domain - this idea in 1971 - put forward by programmer Ray Tomlinson.

Tomlinson needed such a symbol during the period when he was working on creating a messaging system on the Arpanet network (the ancestor of the Internet). Essentially, he had to come up with a new addressing scheme that would identify not only the recipients, but also the computers on which their mailboxes were located. To do this, Tomlinson needed a separator, and his, in general, random choice fell on the @ sign.

The first network address was tomlinson@bbn-tenexa. The “dog” became popular in 1996, when the Hotmail service appeared.

About a year after the events described above, Vintan Cerf and Bob Kahn invented a protocol called TCP/IP. And this, too, was mentioned for a long time only in narrow circles.

In general, the history of the Internet is quite recent, all historical figures are still alive, so it would be fair to mention the people who had a hand in the creation of e-mail.

One of the creators is Douglas Engelbart (here is the history of this invention). He made a computer mouse and created the first text messaging system. After that, Tomlinson presented it in the form of an envelope with a recipient, sender and address field and the text of the letter. After this, the program was processed by Lawrence Roberts, who came up with a list of letters, reading the letter selectively and storing the information in a separate file and forwarding it.

Tomlinson, it should be noted, was quite amused by the hype that was unleashed on the 30th email.

Despite the fame that has befallen him, he comes across as an ordinary person, although he chuckles at the fact that the e-mail, according to everyone else, appeared in one day. And this was not 30 years ago. The history of the @ sign is a rather funny epic, which is also connected with the first message. There are two legends about this.

The first version of what was contained in the historic first letter was that Tomlinson typed QWERTYUIOP - that is, the entire top row of letters from left to right. Journalists made a lot of noise about this. They were interested in what was written and clearly expected something meaningful and symbolic. Since Tomlinson was not a public person at all, he had no idea that he could say anything.

He answered quite honestly about the body of the letter, since he had no idea at all that it could turn out to be historical. But journalists need zest, not platitudes. Therefore, I didn’t really want to inform everyone that the letter contained a completely disordered set of letters. That's why QWERTYUIOP appeared. But the engineer does not even think to refute this version.

And the second version is that he wrote a quote from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. One must think that the scientist is simply making fun of journalists and making fun of them as much as he can. It would be strange if he actually wrote something sublime in every experimental letter. But the journalists liked this version enough, and they began to repeat it.

In Russia, users most often call the “@” symbol “dog,” which is why e-mail addresses derived from personal names and surnames sometimes take on an unexpected connotation. It is curious that this symbol is used in their work by both folk talents (for example, the joke: “The dog is missing, don’t offer @”), and official jokers - KVN players (for example, “ [email protected]»).
But still: why “dog”? There are several versions of the origin of this funny name.

Firstly, the icon really does look like a curled up dog.

Secondly, the abrupt sound of the English “at” is a bit like a dog barking.

Thirdly, with a fair amount of imagination, you can see in the outline of the symbol almost all the letters included in the word “dog”, well, with the exception of “k”.

But the most romantic is the following legend: “A long time ago, when computers were large and displays were exclusively text-based, there lived a popular game with the simple name “Adventure.” Its point was to travel through a computer-generated labyrinth in search of treasures and battles with harmful underground creatures. In this case, the labyrinth on the screen was drawn with the symbols “!”, “+” and “-”, and the player, treasures and hostile monsters were designated by various letters and icons. Moreover, according to the plot, the player had a faithful assistant - a dog, who could be sent into the catacombs for reconnaissance. And it was, of course, indicated by the @ sign.”

Whether this was the root cause of the now generally accepted name, or, conversely, the icon was chosen because it was already called that way, the legend is silent about this.

To be fair, it should be noted that in Russia “dog” is also called doggie, frog, bun, ear, ram and even muck.

In other countries, this symbol is associated with various objects. Below is a far from complete list of how the “@” symbol is called in other countries.

Italians say “chiocciola” (“snail”), in Greece they know it as “παπακι” - “duck”, in the Czech Republic and Slovakia - “zavináč” - rollmops - (“herring roll” or marinated herring), in Taiwan they use the concept “小老鼠” (pronounced “xiao lao shu”) - “mouse”, in Israel the common name is “שטרודל” - “strudel”, and in Kazakhstan the sign is called “aikulak” - “ear of the moon”.

Bulgaria – klomba or maimunsko a (“monkey A”),
Netherlands – apenstaartje (“monkey tail”),
Spain – like the weight measure “arroba”,
France – the same weight unit “arrobase”,
Germany, Poland – monkey tail, monkey ear, paper clip, monkey,
Denmark, Norway, Sweden - “snabel-a” - “snout a” or elephant trunk,
America, Finland - cat,
China, Taiwan - little mouse,
Türkiye - rose,
in Serbia - “crazy A”,
in Vietnam – “crooked A”,
in Ukraine - “ravlik” (snail), “doggie” or again “dog”.

As you can see, for many peoples the @ sign evokes an association with a comfortably nestled animal, for some with a delicious strudel or herring roll, the poetic Turks compared it to a flower, but the disciplined Japanese use the English “attomark” without any poetic comparisons.

sources
http://www.factroom.ru/facts/40864#more-40864
http://shkolazhizni.ru/archive/0/n-7999/
http://viva-woman.ru/novosti-so-vsego-sveta/kak-pojavilsja-simvol-sobaka.html

Let me just remind you

In Turkey - a rose, in Israel - a strudel, in the USA - a cat, and in our common people - a “dog”. This is the nickname for the worldwide symbol of the electronic mailbox @, which has replaced the address, paper and pen in our everyday life.

Where did this funny squiggle with the letter “a” come from and why do we use it in our email addresses?

The origin of the symbol is shrouded in mystery and has given rise to dozens of theories. In 2000, Roman professor Giorgio Stabile put forward an interpretation of the origin of the “dog”, which refers to the letter of a 16th century merchant and the designation of the letter “a” with a curl 1 amphorae of sold wine.

American Berthold Ullman is confident that the “@” sign was invented by monks of medieval orders and meant Latin "ad"(designation: “on”, “in”, “in connection with”).
If we take Spanish and French, then the name of “dog” sounds like “arroba”, that is ancient measure of weight equal to 15 kilograms and is designated precisely by the “@” symbol.
The official name of the sign is “at” and takes its toll name from trade calculations. For example, 5 products @ (for) 2 UAH each. The symbol was used so often by merchants that it was decided to place it on typewriter keyboards, and from there it moved to our computers.

But “@” began to surf the Internet thanks to the inventor of soap, Ray Tomlinson. It was he who decided to assign the “dog” to the mail, since the sign could not be found in any other name or abbreviation. The first Internet mail address in history was: tomlinson@bbn-tenexa. Then the engineer had no idea how wildly popular the squiggle, which he chose as the main symbol, would gain.

So why do we still have a “dog”?

And here, too, there is no specific version. Some believe that the symbol really looks like a puppy curled up in a ball. The latter are confident that the English “at” repeated more than once vaguely resembles a dull dog barking. And still others prove that almost all the signs in the word “dog” are in one way or another similar to “@”. Although this theory raises significant doubts.

But the most popular version of the origin of our name for electronic soap is associated with one of the first antediluvian computer games called “Adventure”. Where one of the main characters is a funny dog, looking for treasure in a terrible labyrinth and denoted by the “@” symbol.

In fairness, it should be noted that our symbol, in addition to our favorite dog, was nicknamed a frog, a mullet, a snail and even a lamb.

In other countries, the fantasy ran even wilder. The Netherlands - a monkey's tail, Denmark - a trunk, China - a mouse, Serbia - crazy "A", and creative Slovakia - "rollmops", which means, believe it or not, a pickled herring. Just like that.

Now you know where one of the most used symbols in the world came from, so similar to a cozy little animal.

Today we have a “dog” icon on our turn, which, if we adhere to a scientific approach, is officially called “commercial at”, it looks something like this: @. Sound familiar? Well, a dog, an “incomprehensible badge”, “with a tail” and even a “monkey”. But mostly it’s “dog”. Why and where did this name come from? Many are perplexed, but still continue to say something like “Petrovinvest dog mail.ru” when dictating (for example, their Email on the phone). It doesn't always turn out well.

Moreover, at the other end of the line he will most likely be understood correctly, if he is not a foreigner or a Russian-speaking comrade who has been living in a foreign land for a long time. For the latter, “dog” (especially if this word is translated into the opponent’s language) causes stupor. The fact is that this designation took root only in RuNet, and in the bourgeoisie they don’t call the @ symbol, but not like us. By the way, the history of the appearance of this icon both on the keyboard and in email addresses is also interesting. Actually, this is what we will talk about in this post.

How to correctly pronounce the @ sign - dog, dog or...

So, in 99.9 percent of cases, our compatriots are forced to “distinguish themselves” in the process of verbal transmission to someone. Despite the dominance of instant messengers, regular email. mail is still the de facto main contact channel (at least the official one). Most often, emails are exchanged when there is a need to contact or receive some materials (photos, documents, etc.).

It’s good if you have the opportunity to write “your soap” to your opponent on a piece of paper or send it in an SMS message. The problem with the “dog” comes up precisely when it is necessary to transmit email by voice. It’s not a problem to convey Latin characters using names (by the first letters), but the @ icon not only confuses many, but also makes them wonder whether it would be correct to call it a “dog” (like a dirty word). And why exactly “sobakevich”?

So, first things first. Yes, calling the @ icon a dog is perfectly acceptable(at least on television and in the press they do not shy away from this jargon, although they can hardly serve as examples of correct behavior and expression of one’s thoughts). However, it would be better to still understand what is being said, and if yours doesn’t understand you, then quickly correct yourself and give another (officially correct, not slang) sound designation for the @ symbol.

Actually, it's pronounced "eth"(from English at). This sign is written as "commercial at". Why commercial? Well, because the English word at itself is a preposition, which has several translation variations in the Russian language (meanings - the Russian language is great and powerful). For example, it can be the preposition "on", "by" or "in" (sometimes "about"), but in general it is usually indicates location.

By the way, this is why its symbolic designation (the @ icon) was chosen to display Email addresses. Look how everything falls into place..ru”, i.e.. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. We had a question - why “@” is called the commercial at. Here again everything is quite logical.

To abbreviate in English accounts (accounting documentation), several hundred years ago it became customary to write a single @ symbol instead of the word at. For example, like this: 7 articles @ 5 thousand rubles = 35 thousand rubles. If you decipher it, it will turn out: writing seven articles “at” 5 thousand rubles apiece will cost 35 thousand rubles. Thus, the question of why @ is called a commercial at can be considered over. Go ahead.

Because accounts (accounting) is a serious matter, then with the advent of the first serial typewriters, in addition to the usual letters and numbers, they began to add the “dog” sign (in their name). Well, because... Since personal computers largely inherited their layout from typewriters, the @ symbol has successfully migrated to the keyboards of PC users. So we followed it pretty clearly.

But why was “dog” (et) chosen as ? Well, it’s worth mentioning here that @ is used as a separator not only in email addresses, but also in . It is used to separate the login and password from the actual address of the page being accessed (see the link for details). But this format of URLs is rare, and for the vast majority of Internet users the stumbling block is located in the email address.

As I already (hurriedly) mentioned a little higher, adding the “at” sign as a separator was quite logical (based on the meaning of the word at and the use of its analogue in the form of the @ symbol in bourgeois accounting). Those. any email address can be easily pronounce as: petrov on gmai.com (and this will be extremely correct and true).

Everything is clear and no questions arise with dogs. If you dive into history once again, the first to introduce this type of recording into use was a certain Tomlinson (a programmer, of course) back in the shaggy year of 1971. With the help of this record, the host (computer, server) on which this user had to be searched was also separated.

With a Russian-language keyboard layout, in order to insert the @ icon into the text, you will first need to switch to English using hotkeys (depending on the OS settings, this can be done with the key combination Shift+Alt or Shift+Control), or by clicking by the language selection icon in the tray (bottom right area of the screen). @ lives above the number 2, i.e. To insert it, you will need to hold Shift and press two (for those new to using PCs, I’ll chew).

So why is the @ symbol called a dog in RuNet?

Naturally, at that time in the vastness of the RuNet (which did not yet exist) no one knew about this. The initial computerization of the majority of the Russian-speaking mass of users began only in the 80s, and it was then that the jargon “dog” (dog) appeared to denote the sign separating the writing of an email address. Email mail in general was one of the first aspects that a novice PC and Internet user became acquainted with ().

There is no exact information about who or what prompted the viral spread of this meme (Internet jargon). There are several assumptions, and all of them are rightly based on the fact that in the 80s there was no graphics we were used to - neither in games nor in operating systems. Everything was test, or rather symbolic.

For example, in games, characters were displayed and locations were created using various icons. I still remember the flying shooter game that I spent money on in an online club during my childhood - everything there was drawn with arrows, sticks and stars. But what a thrill I felt from the game then! It is no longer possible to understand, repeat or explain this now (one can only remember it with longing).

So, there is several versions explaining the assignment of the name “dog” to the @ icon or “doggy” (probably ladies use this option more often). According to one of them, it was the action-adventure game that was popular at that time that served as the starting point for the viral spread of the meme (personally, I did not play it, or I completely forgot). In it, a dog traveled with the hero, which was either entirely or partially (its nose) displayed using the @ symbol. In this case, the association is quite understandable and explainable.

According to another version, the special spelling of the @ sign on some popular computers in RuNet at that time is to blame. This sign was drawn with a shortened tail and very much resembled a dog.

In addition, it was always displayed when loading, and once a name mentioned by someone could find support and begin to spread virally so much as to break through the gap of generations, completely losing its original meaning.

What's the result?

In general, there is only one conclusion - the @ symbol is called a dog for a reason that has long been unclear to us. This is just a rudiment - everyone talks and I talk. Is it worth continuing this bacchanalia? Why not. This makes Russian-speaking netizens even more mysterious in the eyes of foreigners.

Although they themselves do not lag behind and often instead of the English “et” they pronounce something like “snail” (indeed, the @ sign looks like a snail - certainly more than like a dog), “monkey”, “and with a tail” (trunk , curl), “duck”, “bun”, etc. (I would also add the statement “some crap” by Voronin Sr. from the series, because it also fits). People's imagination is limitless.

P.S. By the way, I want to correct myself. “Dog” (aka “et”) found registration not only in email addresses. We can say that it has successfully gained a foothold there too. After all, the @ icon is always placed before the user’s name, for example, when replying to his message.

Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site