(This article appeared in the April/May Lexpert under the above title)
Wh@’s
Th@? In Finnish It’s a C@’s Tail
by
Howard Richler
A couple of years ago I contemplated making a home exchange
with a couple in Berlin and as a result I had a telephone conversation with someone
called Uwe Mueller in which we talked about our respective home towns and the
previous home exchanges we had experienced. Like many Germans, Mr. Mueller’s English
was quite proficient but we did hit a snag at one juncture. I asked him for his
email address to which he replied, “It’s umuellerklammeraffegmail.com.” I didn’t
know if Mr Mueller had just sneezed or was swearing at me so I asked him to repeat what
he said at not surprisingly it was the
same - ”umuellerklammeraffegmail.com.”
After a pause of several seconds he checked with someone near him and
told me “apparently in North America you call it ‘at’.”
Now while klammeraffe
is not as long as freundschaftsbezeigungen
(“demonstrations of friendship”) or the more diminutive volksgemeinschaft (“people’s community”)
it is still quite a mouthful compared to “at.”
Incidentally, klammeraffe
means “spider monkey” and if you find it peculiar that Germans compare the @
sign with an animal, be aware that the rather pedestrian universal use of “at” designation in the English-speaking
world represents the exception, not the rule. For example, Germany’s neighbour
Netherlands designates the symbol as api
short for apestaart (monkey’s tail)
whereas the Italians call it chiocciolina
and the sometimes used French petit
escargot both that mean “little snail.” Danes and Swedes call it snabel or snabela (elephant’s trunk) and Finns call it miau, “cat tail.” Keeping up this zoocentric tradition, Czechs see
the symbol as a rolled-up fish filet, Greeks as a duckling, Hungarians and
Thais as a worm, Ukranians and Russians as a dog and the Chinese as a mouse. Some
countries prefer to envisage the symbol as tasty foods like Norwegians who
designate it kanel-bolle
(spiral-shaped-cinnamon cake) and
Israelis who call it shtrudel, and
Austrians strudel (pastry).
Spaniards seemingly have a different conception. Here
it is called arroba, an ancient unit
of weight of approximately 25 pounds. This word derives from Arabic word rub (pronounced roob) which refers to “a
quarter part.” Apparently, in the 19th century, Spanish ports began
emulating the commercial measures of the English. But as the Spaniards were
unaware of the meaning given by the British to the @ symbol, where it only
designated how much a unit cost (e.g., 10@ £5) meant 10 units of a product at
the price of 5 pounds),they supposed it was a unit of weight because it was
used as such already in Spain. In Portuguese- speaking countries the same word
is used and is also based on a unit of weight, slightly higher than the Spanish
one.
Before computer networks
were interconnected, an email could only be used to send messages to various
users of the same computer. But once
computers began to talk to each other over networks things became more complex. A means was required needed to indicate to
whom the electronic mail should go that the electronic posties understood -
just like the postal system, we needed a way to indicate an address. This
problem was solved in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson a Boston researcher at
ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. (Tomlinson died this past March at age
74). He selected the symbol @ to represent a separator between an email name
and an email location. So while the “at” or “commercial at” designation may not
be as evocative as the many animalistic ones that are used, it is an eminently
logical one. Incidentally, the @ symbol was not included on the keyboard of the
earliest typewriters but it made its debut in one 1889 model and the
commercially successful models from the Underwood No. 5 starting in 1900.
It is commonly believed that Tomlinson chose this as
this quintessential email symbol precisely because it was not used that often
although it sat on every keyboard. So although the “at” designation is somewhat
boring compared to the lurid metaphorical ones used in many countries, its name
does have history on its side. In any case, “commercial at” is the official
name for the symbol in the ASCII character set.
While Tomlinson helped popularize the @ symbol, in
reality it has enjoyed a long history. It was first used in the seventh century where it was a way of
writing with one stroke the word ad which means “at” or “to” in Latin. Along
its path, it has enjoyed other senses. For example, Venetian traders used it to
signify “amphora,” a terracotta vessel that was a symbol of measurement. But it always kept its meaning of “at” and
was often used as an accounting and commercial abbreviation meaning “at a rate
of.” For example, the accounting record 10@£15 would designate ten units of at
the price of 15 pounds each unit.
Most likely inspired by the name for the & symbol
– ampersand, the designation ampersat and asperand have been suggested as names
for the @ symbol, but neither one has inspired much support.
Richler’s latest book Wordplay: Arranged and Deranged Wit was published in April 2016
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