What is a dog in email. What does the symbol @ "Doggy" mean? Esperanto language and postal symbol

The dog icon familiar to every web user has been around for much longer than email. But it wasn't until the advent of the Internet that the rounded squiggle became widely known: 2 billion times a day @ takes its place between the sender's name and domain name server. Who and how guessed to put the dog icon in the mail address? And why a dog?

A long time ago, when (oh, horror!) There was no e-mail, no computers, not even electricity, all books were filled out by hand. No, then the dog badge was not written in the address, but it performed a completely noble function: it saved the time of clerks who painstakingly worked in the semi-darkness, half-bent position and holding the paper on their knees. Why in such an uncomfortable position remains a mystery. But if you imagine several hours in this position, and work with pen and ink, it becomes clear how much easier all kinds of ligatures made the work.

The dog icon is read in English as “At”, which is translated into Russian as “on, in, on”. This sign denoted belonging to something, was used in exchange accounts, and today more often indicate a specific place or event. In the Middle Ages, instead of "At", they used the preposition "Ad" - to, at, on, at, before. And the letter "d" was decorated with a long ponytail thrown to the left. The ligature @ was formed by the merger of the letters "a" and "d", and, by and large, the history of the creation of the dog icon is the history of medieval writing in Europe.

In Brazil, Spain and Portugal, a similar symbol denoted a measure of weight and volume equal to one arrobe. And although historians doubt that it was the same @, but the capital "A" with a curl, decorating jugs of wine or oil, really resembles an electronic "dog".

Before putting the dog icon, translate the keyboard into English. language. Then, while holding shift, press the number 2. If you are working in Word, open the insert - symbol - tab "characters", select "plain text - basic Latin". In Unicode, @ is denoted by the number 0040, and in Morse code by the character set: dot - dash - dash - dot - dash - dot.

Every European trader who lived during the Renaissance knew perfectly well how to write a dog badge in the most profitable way: a twisted elegant @ was located in front of the price of the goods, and was supposed to attract the attention of passers-by. Later, this ligature began to be used in accounting, for example: 12p @ $6 - 12 pieces for $6.

The following fact is not directly related to the dog icon, but is so curious that it would be wrong not to mention it. In the XV century, when about post offices in hometown they didn’t even dream, letters were delivered by foot or horse messengers. They announced their arrival to the population by blowing a horn similar to that used by merchants, itinerant artists, etc. From the end of the XVI - beginning of the XVII centuries. horns were forbidden to be used by anyone except postmen. Today, the image of crossed post horns can be seen on envelopes, stamps, postcards, etc. A simple tool has become a symbol of mail, recognizable all over the world. So, the dog icon in the address is very reminiscent of the outline of a horn, which is undoubtedly a curious coincidence. And how interesting it turned out: the symbol

"virtual" mail accidentally repeated the outlines of the real mail symbol!

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 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 grandiloquently, in my opinion, but the following fact testifies to the worldwide recognition of this symbol, and as it is even sometimes noted, “canonization”.

February 2004 international union Telecommunications introduced a code for the @ symbol ( - - - ) in Morse code, for the convenience of transmitting e-mail 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 such a hypothesis. A 16th-century document written by a Florentine merchant mentioned "the price of one A of wine" (possibly an amphorae). At the same time, the letter A, according to the then tradition, was decorated with a curl and looked like @.

The American scholar 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 script used by the monks, the letter "d" was written with a small tail, and this made it look a bit 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 merchants: 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 at that time, approximately equal to 26 -ty l.

In Spanish, Portuguese, French, the name of the symbol comes from the word "arroba" - an old Spanish measure of weight, approx. 15 kg. (according to other sources, 11.502 kg), which was abbreviated on the letter with the @ sign.

During the Renaissance, the @ sign began to be used to indicate the price, but in the era of the industrial revolution, the @ sign began to appear in the reports of accountants. The modern official name for the symbol "commercial at" comes from bills, for example, 7 widgets @ $2 each = $14, which translates to 7 widgets. 2$ = 14$. Since this symbol was used in business, it was placed on the keyboards of typewriters and from there migrated to the computer.

We owe the distribution of this symbol on the network to the forefather of e-mail, Tomlinson. He was the one who chose the @ symbol.

Here we need to digress a little and enlighten you about what Tomlinson did and why it is he who is considered to be the inventor of the email, and at the same time the @ sign, when in fact he did neither. The company where Tomltson worked became a member of the ARPANet project, a computer network for the US Department of Defense, around the late 60s. This network was the forerunner of the Internet. In those years, there were already several programs that were able to transfer 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 at that time worked about 200 times slower than a modern ordinary one, which allows you to download information at a speed of 56.6 Kbps.

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

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

In order to forward the file, Tomlinson spent about six months until he managed to send a message to a computer that could indeed be considered remote.

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

Well, now you can return to the "dog". Tomlinson used a 33 Teletype keyboard. And one day he needed a fairly unique symbol that had not been widely used before. Such a character was not supposed to appear in any name or name, and it also had to separate the username and computer name. An algorithm should have been obtained according to the type of name - symbol - place.

In addition to numbers and letters, there were punctuation marks on the keyboard, as well as @. But after 1971, the keyboard model has changed.

@ was the most simple solution such an algorithm. According to Tomlinson himself, this was the only option. When asked much later why he chose this particular icon, he replied simply: "I was looking on the keyboard for a character 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 secured the use of a character when separating a name and domain - this idea in 1971 th year put forward by the programmer Ray Tomlinson.

Such a symbol was needed by Tomlinson at the time when he was working on the creation of a messaging system in the Arpanet network (the progenitor of the Internet). Basically, he had to come up with new scheme addressing, which 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 [email protected] The mass "dog" became 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 was also 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 creating e-mail.

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

Tomlinson, it should be noted, was quite amused by the hype that unfolded on the 30th e-mail.

Despite the fame that has descended on him, he comes across as an ordinary person, although he scoffs at the fact that e-mail, according to everyone else, appeared in one day. And it wasn't 30 years ago either. The history of the @ sign is a rather funny epic that is connected with the first message. There are two legends about this.

The first version of what was contained in historical first The letter said that Tomlinson typed QWERTYUIOP - that is, the entire top row of letters from left to right. On this occasion, journalists raised a lot of noise. They were interested in what was written, and clearly expected something significant and symbolic. Since Tomlinson was by no means a public person, he did not realize that he could say anything.

He quite honestly answered about the body of the letter, since he did not suspect at all that it could turn out to be historical. But journalists need zest, not platitudes. Therefore, I did not really want to inform everyone that the letter turned out to be a random set of letters. Therefore, QWERTYUIOP appeared. And the engineer does not think to refute this version.

And the second version is that he wrote a quote from Lincoln's Gettysburg speech. One must think that the scientist is simply teasing journalists to the fullest and scoffing as best 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 refer to the “@” symbol as a “dog”, which is why e-mail addresses formed from personal names and surnames sometimes take on unexpected coloring. It is curious that this symbol is used in their work by both folk talents (for example, the joke: “The dog is gone, @ do not offer”), and official jokes - KVN players (for example, “ [email protected]»).
But still: why "dog"? There are several versions of the origin of this funny name.

First, the badge really looks 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 consider almost all the letters included in the word “dog” in the outlines of the symbol, well, perhaps, with the exception of “k”.

But the most romantic is the following legend: “Once upon a time, when computers were large and displays were exclusively text, there was a popular game with the simple name “Adventure” (“Adventure”). Its meaning was to travel through a computer-generated labyrinth in search of treasures and battles with harmful underground creatures. At the same time, the labyrinth on the screen was drawn with the symbols "!", "+" and "-", and the player, treasures and hostile monsters were indicated by various letters and icons. Moreover, according to the plot, the player had a faithful assistant - a dog who could be sent to the catacombs for reconnaissance. And it was denoted, of course, 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, the legend is silent about this.

In fairness, it should be noted that in Russia a “dog” is also called a dog, a frog, a bun, an ear, a ram, and even a kryakozyabra.

In other countries, this symbol is associated with different objects. Below is far from full list how the "@" symbol is called in other countries.

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

Bulgaria - klomba or maimunsko a ("monkey A"),
Netherlands - apenstaartje ("monkey's tail"),
Spain - like the measure of weight "arroba",
France - the same measure of weight "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 - mouse,
Türkiye - rose,
in Serbia - "crazy A",
in Vietnam - "twisted A",
in Ukraine - “ravlik” (snail), “doggie” or, again, “dog”.

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

Ampersand, slash, circumflex, octothorp, asterisk - are these names familiar to everyone? But most people see them every day, but do not always know that their names sound exactly like that. But it's just & , / , ^ , # and * respectively. How about finding out where the "dog" icon came from, where it's used, and why it's called that?

Story

@ is found in medieval texts, but the name of the person who first began to use it is unknown. At that time, the monks wrote it to replace such prepositions and constructions as "in", "on", "in relation to", etc., that is, the Latin ad. In addition, in France and Spain, this sign was used to designate one of the measures of weight - arroba, equal to 11.5-12.5 kg. In some trade documents, the symbol "dog" was found when talking about wine. Therefore, experts believe that vessels for drinks - amphorae - were also designated in this way.

Later, merchants began to use it when issuing commercial invoices. With the invention of typewriters, the "dog" icon settled on their keyboards. And after the advent of computers, he migrated there too. Due to its function in English language it was named commercial at. Since this sign was unknown before the advent of computer keyboards in the USSR, it has not yet acquired its more or less official name in Russian. Despite the fact that in old handwritten books you can find characters that vaguely resemble @, after all, they are not such a sign. So it is clear why he did not receive a well-established and unified verbal designation. In colloquial speech, several names are used at once. So why is the icon called "dog"? There are several possible reasons.

Why "dog"?

There is no official translation of the name of this icon in Russian, so its name sounds like "commercial at". In colloquial speech, several names have taken root, the most popular of which is considered to be "dog". In Russian, as in others, there are also other, less well-known names for this symbol, but they will be discussed a little later. So why is the icon called "dog"? The truth, of course, is no longer known, but several possible reasons are given:

• The @ symbol itself resembles a sleeping dog curled up in a ball.
• The English name of this symbol is somewhat reminiscent of a dog barking, although this could hardly affect the fact that this symbol was called that way.
• Finally, the most likely option: at a time when computers were much less accessible than today, many experts were fond of the Adventure game, which used various symbols to indicate the surrounding characters and objects. The main character had faithful companion- his dog. It is not difficult to guess what symbol was used to designate it.

In addition to this name, there are many other names used for @. I wonder what else this icon is called.

Other names in Russian

In addition to various non-printable expressions, in some places alternative names for "dogs" are used - "monkey", "krakozyabra", "squiggle", "ear", "snail", "cat", "rose", "frog" and others. As a rule, such names reflect people's ideas about what this symbol looks like. And Russian-speaking Internet users are not so original in this - in many European languages, the common names @ are also associated with the "animal" theme.

In other countries

Many foreigners believe that @ looks like a strudel, which, however, is not so surprising, there is an external resemblance. In France and Spain, the old designation "arroba" has been preserved. In some countries, the name is associated with the letter most similar to the "dog" icon - "a". In Serbia, for example, the name "crazy A" is used, and in Vietnam - "crooked A".

And yet, when communicating with representatives different countries, as a rule, @ is called at. With the spread of the Internet, it became necessary, if only to quickly dictate your email address to someone. By the way, "dog" was recognized as such a significant symbol that in 2004 it even received its own code in

By the way, it is the most popular name @ in Russian that has become the subject of numerous jokes. Since this character is most often found in email addresses, and the first part of them is the names or nicknames of users, sometimes the whole thing sounds quite comical.

How to print?

The dog icon on the keyboard is located in such a way that it is almost impossible to find it by accident. In addition, it is not in the Russian layout, since it is not needed there. After all, it is simply not used by Russians in their native speech and in writing. In the English layout of the standard keyboard, @ is on the 2 key. How to print the "dog" icon? Very simple - hold down the Shift key and press the 2 upper numeric keypad. It doesn't work in other layouts. If @ is very necessary, you can copy it from any email address. There is another way to put the "dog" icon - open in a text editor, for example, Microsoft Word, the menu for inserting special characters. Finding what you are looking for is not difficult, in the same window you can set with which it will be possible to print @ in the future.

Usage

It is believed that the “dog” owes part of its modern functional load to the person who first sent an email in 1971 on the Arpanet network, which is considered the progenitor of the modern Internet, Ray Tomlinson. Some even attribute to him the invention of this symbol, but this is not so. Now @ is used as a separator between the names of the mailbox itself and the domain name on which it is located. This icon was chosen for a very simple reason - it could not be contained in anyone's name, so there could be no confusion with identifiers. It is this area of ​​application that is most noticeable to ordinary Internet users, but @ is used not only here. It is also present in programming languages. There, the icon serves a variety of purposes: in PHP it disables the output of possible errors, in Perl it acts as an array identifier, and so on. Some organizations use @ as their informal character. Also, in some Romance languages, this icon is used in electronic correspondence between acquaintances, if it is necessary to make this or that noun gender neutral for some reason, that is, @ replaces A or O.

It may seem that this symbol is not so much needed, but it is not. Replacing the "dog" is almost impossible, and it's not worth it - everyone is already used to it.

Surely each of us faced the following situation. You dictate your email address to a foreigner, and when you reach the @ sign, you fall into a slight stupor, because on a subconscious level you understand that if you use the word “dog”, then you will definitely be misunderstood.

I must say that the Russians in this regard are not the only such inventors who decided to give the @ symbol an animal nickname. In Italy, for example, it is called a "snail", and, let's be fair, it looks more like a snail @ than a dog, but the Greeks associate the symbol with a duck and call it "παπάκι".

WHAT IS THE @ SIGN IN ENGLISH AND THE HISTORY OF THE SYMBOL

Meanwhile, the English name of the @ symbol is one of the most logical and simple. When you dictate your email address to a foreigner, just say "at" - it is under this name that the "squiggle" passes in English speaking countries. And here's the reason. The fact is that initially this symbol in old printed documents was replaced by the English preposition “at” or the French “à”, and the sign was mainly used in papers, telling about the purchase or sale of something. A simple example. The phrase "Mr White bought this house at the rate of 100,000 dollars" ("Mr. Weiss bought this house at a price of $ 100,000") could look like this: "Mr White bought this house @ $ 100,000."

The painting "Market in the port", Emanuel de Witte

However, the @ sign was not first invented by printers. They just borrowed it from the market vendors, and the vendors used it again to indicate prices, such as "12 apples @ $1" - that is, "I sell a dozen apples for one dollar." I must say, the symbol was international and helped to make transactions without further ado and profound knowledge languages.

The Great Fish Market, painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder.

However, if you delve even further into the wilds of the history of the @ symbol, then it turns out that the “shocking truth” is completely clear. The fact is that the @ sign was invented not by merchants at all, but by medieval monks. The first squiggle familiar to all of us was used in 1345 by the Byzantine chronicler Constantine Manasseh, he put it instead of the letter “A” in the word “Amen”. True, why Konstantin did this, the researchers have not figured out.

Well, then it started! Medieval monks began to actively use the @ sign to replace at, to, by, about with them - this simple trick saved expensive parchment and valuable ink. By the way, the @ sign is often called “at” even today, not only in English-speaking countries. For example, under this name it appears in Arabic And Georgian languages ​​(آتْ), as well as in Esperanto(ce-signo), Hindi(at), Icelandic(the local "hjá" is actually the translation of the word at) and Thai(at). In addition, this is the name of the symbol in Hong Kong, Macau, Lithuania, Latvia And Estonia. In other languages, the “dog” was assigned the expression at the rate, which translates as “according to”, so the icon is called, for example, in Nepal.

25 POUNDS IN ONE @

IN Spain And Portugal the @ symbol was historically called arroba and was used to denote 25 pounds, and in Italy it was used to reflect a unit of weight when writing, based on the capacity of a standard amphora. For example, a document compiled by the Florentine Francesco Lapi has survived to this day. In it, he reported that he sold wine in Peru in the amount of @ and at a bargain price. The document is dated May 4, 1536, and it was sent from Seville to Rome.

And to this day in Spain, Portugal, Mexico And Brazil for the @ sign, the very word arroba is used - the old name for a measure of weight of 25 pounds, by the way, in Brazil and Portugal it is still used to denote 15 kilograms. In France the @ sign has several names, but sometimes it can also be called arobas, which again is associated with a measure of weights of 25 pounds (reworked arroba), although this word is used less and less today. In Catalonia, @ is also sometimes called arrova - again, a modified arroba.

@ IN THE ANIMAL WORLD

And yet associations with animals in relation to @ symbol- the most common. And, by the way, indicative. It is worth at least briefly studying the list in order to understand that we are all very different, and the same thing can remind us of completely different things.

1. In Germany@ is called klammeraffe, which means "monkey's tail", by the way, it seems. This symbol is also called Africa– aapstert, China– xiao laoshu (小老鼠), in Romania- maimuţă, in France- queue de singe and in Luxembourg- afeschwanz. But in Poland the icon is simply called a monkey - małpa or małpka. The symbol received the same name in Croatia And Indonesia, V Serbia(majmun) and in Slovenia(afna). IN Macedonia@ is called maјmunche, which means "little monkey", and in Bulgaria one of the names of the maimunk-a symbol is “monkey A”.

2. Danes And Norwegians the symbol resembles a pig's tail, which is how the word grisehale is translated, which is used in Denmark and Norway. However, in Norway they also have an alternative musical name for the @ sign - krøllalfa, which means "twisted harp".

3. Residents Sweden went further than their Scandinavian neighbors, they call @snabel-a which means "elephant's trunk". However, the trunk @ is sometimes called both in Denmark and Faroe Islands- I wonder if the residents of Farrer have ever seen elephants live?

4. In Italy@ is called chiocciola, that is, "snail". The icon is also associated with a snail in Korea. True, their word golbaeng-i (골뱅이) or daseulgi (다슬기) is more, let's say, detailed, it translates as "freshwater snail without tentacles." In Welsh, which is common in Wales, @ are called malwen or malwoden, which also means "snail". In France@ is also sometimes called escargot - no translation is required here, everyone knows French escargot snails: if you haven’t eaten them, then you’ve definitely heard about them.

5. Armenians and Russians think alike, in Armenia@ is called shnik, which means "puppy".

6. But in some areas China the icon is called a mouse, I wonder what they call a computer mouse?

7. In Finland everything is quite interesting. Here, @ is most often called kissanh nt, which means "cat's tail", by the way, Finns often use this sign when writing to indicate the sound "meow"!

8. In Greece"dog" turned into a duck, the word παπάκι (papaki) is used here to denote the symbol.

9. In Hungary@ has a very unpleasant name. Here the symbol is called kukac, which translates as "worm". Involuntarily, “Mowgli” comes to mind: “And they also called you a worm, an earthworm!”



DELICIOUS SYMBOL NAMES @

Do you remember that in the 90s the @ sign was sometimes called a bun? True, this name did not take root in our country, so to speak, the “dog” won the “bun” in the linguistic duel. However, in some countries have taken root and edible names icon.

1. For example, Danes sometimes referred to as kanelbulle, which means "cinnamon bun".

2. Residents Catalonia the word ensaïmada is often used to denote @ - this is the name of the buns typical of the island of Mallorca, by the way, they are very similar in shape, the photo of baking is below.

3. In Azerbaijan the symbol is called ət, which translates as "meat" or "food". Where is the logic?

4. In Bulgaria@ is often called banitsa - this is also the name of Bulgarian pastries, a twisted shape.

5. In Japan the word attomāku is most often used to designate the @ symbol, which is a translation into the language of the Land of the Rising Sun English expression"at mark", that is, "mark", but sometimes the icon is also called naruto (naruto) here because of the whirlpools in the Naruto Strait, and also because of narutomaki - a type of kamaboko, a traditional component of ramen or udon. Product photo below.

6. The locals also came up with a tasty name for the symbol Israel, here @ is called a strudel.

7. In Czech Republic And Slovakia the badge is called zavináč, which means "fish rolls", usually made from herring.

ALMOST LIKE THE LETTER "A"

To many, the @ symbol resembles A, which, in principle, is logical. And this fact is reflected in many languages ​​of the world. Yes, in Greenland@ is called aajusaq, which means "something that looks like A", in Indonesia the symbol has several names, from the simple “twisted A” - bundar or bulat to artistic ones: “serpentine A” (keong) and “monkey-like A” (monyet). In Bulgarian, @ also has an additional name - klomba, which means "poorly written letter A".

By the way, in 2004, the @ sign was added to Morse code. Here it is denoted by the following combination of dots and dashes: ·-·-·. By the way, this is the only major change that has been made to Morse code since the Second World War.

Did you like the material? Join us on facebook

Julia Malkova- Julia Malkova - founder of the website project. In past Chief Editor Internet project elle.ru and editor-in-chief of the cosmo.ru website. I talk about traveling for my own pleasure and the pleasure of readers. If you are a representative of hotels, tourism office, but we are not familiar, you can contact me by email: [email protected]

In Turkey - a rose, in Israel - a strudel, in the USA - a cat, and in our common people - a "dog". This is how they called the global symbol of the electronic box @, which replaced the address, paper and pen in our everyday life.

And where did such a 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. The Roman professor Giorgio Stabile in 2000 put forward an interpretation of the origin of the "dog", which refers to the letter of the merchant of the 16th century and the designation with the letter "a" with a curl 1 amphorae of selling wine.

• The American Berthold Ullman is sure that the “@” sign was invented by the monks of medieval orders and denoted Latin "ad"(symbol: "on", "in", "in connection with").
• If we take Spanish and French, then here the name "dogs" sounds like "arroba", that is old unit of weight equal to 15 kilograms and denoted by the symbol "@".
• Official name sign - "at" and takes its toll name from trade settlements. For example, 5 products @ (for) 2 UAH each. The symbol was used so often by merchants that it was decided to put it on the keyboards of typewriters, and from there it moved to our computers.

But the Internet "@" began to surf thanks to the inventor of soap - Ray Tomlinson. It was he who decided to assign a "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: [email protected] Then the engineer did not even suspect what wild popularity the squiggle, which he chose as the main symbol, would acquire.

So why do we still have a "dog"?

And here, too, there is no definite version. Some believe that the symbol really looks like a puppy curled up. The latter are sure that the English "at" repeated more than once remotely resembles a deaf dog barking. And still others prove that almost all the characters in the word "dog" are somehow similar to "@". Although this theory raises significant doubts.

But here is the most popular version of the origin of our name for the designation of 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 treasures in a terrible labyrinth and designated precisely by the “@” symbol.

In fairness, it should be noted that we have a symbol, in addition to the beloved dog, they called it a frog, a kryakozyabra, a snail and even a lamb.

• In other countries, the fantasy played out even more. The Netherlands is a monkey tail, Denmark is a trunk, China is a mouse, Serbia is a crazy “A”, and creative Slovakia is “rollmops”, which means, you won’t believe it, a herring under a marinade. That's it.

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