The @ Symbol and Its Many Noms De Internet

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mark.

Hi, Mark. Where are you?

Central Florida.

Central Florida. Welcome to the program.

Several years ago, I was working for a company and I was talking with one of our trainers who did a lot of training of international customers.

And one of the questions that he had gotten was about the at symbol.

And, you know, is there another name for the at symbol?

And so this is a question he would always ask his students.

And one of the students who I believe was from, I think he said he was from northern Europe, said, yes, they call it a schnable.

And he mimed like the trunk of an elephant.

An elephant has a schnable.

And he mimed that.

So then it was like every time he had a class, does anybody know of another name?

You know, here in the United States, do we call it anything other than the at symbol?

So that’s my question.

That’s a great question.

It is such a fun question because the answers are delightful.

Martha, so we know something about this Schnabel A, right?

We do, or Schnabela.

Schnabela.

Yeah, yeah, meaning a beak or a trunk.

There are so many adorable, cute names for the at sign in various languages.

You can find lists of them on the Internet.

One of my favorites is kiochola, which is the Italian word for snail, which is so picturesque, I think.

But the schnabela, that would be Denmark and Sweden.

Yes, yes, sorry.

Yes, Denmark and Sweden.

Yeah, so many of them have to do with animals, like the Italian word for snail.

Or in Greek, it’s papaki, which is duckling, which I think is really cute.

Just a little, you know, curled up.

There are various words in German, one of which is affenschwanz, which is monkey tail.

Also very picturesque.

And let’s see, in Russian and Armenian, the names translate as little puppy or little dog.

Aren’t there a bunch that translate as something to do with some kind of pastry?

Sure, sure. Hebrew, strudel.

And Sweden has another one, right? Kanabula, cinnamon roll.

Yeah, yeah. So very picturesque names.

But I did want to recommend to you, Mark, a wonderful book on punctuation that has a whole chapter about the at sign in it.

It’s called Shady Characters, the Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks.

It’s by Keith Houston, and it’s a very, very accessible book.

And it talks about when the at sign first started being used for email by a guy named Ray Tomlinson in 1971, who was a computer engineer and was trying to figure out how to separate somebody’s name from the host computer that you would be sending an email to.

It’s much more exciting the way he tells it than I’m making it sound.

But I would really recommend that book, Shady Characters.

Martha, Shady Characters, is that the book that goes into how it even ended up being standard on the typewriter?

Because that’s a story, too.

How it started in Italian bookkeeping and this eventually ended up being just something that showed up on the keyboard.

So it was there for Ray to consider to being used.

Yes, yes.

Just why the ad symbol was even available to him.

That’s a story in itself over the centuries.

And there it was in front of him.

Yeah, it’s super cool.

Thanks, Mark.

We appreciate your time.

Well, I appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Be well.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

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