Dog sign in different languages. What does the @Dog symbol mean? Why "dog"

Symbol @ mainly used in Internet e when writing an address Email. It serves as a kind of separator between the name of the domain on which the email is registered and the user name.

Now many Internet personalities call this symbol “one of the main pop symbols of our time.” Evidence of universal recognition for this symbol is that in February two thousand and four, the symbol was introduced into Morse code, in which it combines the codes of the Latin letters A and C. Now this symbol can be proudly called the “International Telecommunication Union”.

But this symbol, which has only recently gained recognition, is not as young as one might think. Italian explorer Giorgio Stabile in the city of Prato, in the archives of the Institute economic history discovered a document on which this sign appears for the first time in written form. The document, dated 1536, turned out to be a letter from a merchant, and a symbol @ it designated containers of wine delivered on merchant ships to Spain. After analyzing the data, scientists came to the conclusion that most likely the symbol @ designated a measuring unit equal to the ancient universal measure of volume - the amphora.

American scientist Berthold Ullman suggested that the symbol @ invented by medieval monks. And the symbol was used to abbreviate the Latin word - “ ad", which is one of the universal words, and means "in", "on", "in relation to" and the like.

In French, Portuguese and Spanish, the name of the character @ comes from the ancient word “arroba” - a Spanish measure of weight equal to about fifteen kilograms, which in writing is abbreviated as @ .

Symbol @ now has official name - « commercial at" This name comes from the accounts. Since the symbol was often used in business, they decided to place it on typewriter keyboards. Symbol @ was already present on the keyboard of the first Underwood typewriter, which was released in 1885. Later, this symbol was inherited by computer keyboards.

According to the official history of the Internet, it is generally accepted that the symbol @ in the email address appeared thanks to Ray Tomlinson, an American computer scientist and engineer. It was he who sent the first electronic message back in 1971. He chose a symbol @ as a separator between two names, since this character was not found in the names themselves.

In Russia it is customary to call the symbol @ "dog". This funny name can be explained in several ways. To begin with, the symbol itself is visually similar to a dog curled up in a ball. And the sound English word The "at" in the official name sounds a bit like a dog barking. Also, if you turn on your imagination, then in the symbol @ you can see all the letters from the word “dog”, only with the exception of the letter “k”.

There are also more interesting version origin of this name. Long ago, when computer displays were all text, there was a popular electronic game called " Adventure", or "Adventure". The game was a journey through labyrinths in which treasures were hidden, but also in which underground monsters. The labyrinth consisted of the symbols “+”, “-” and “!”, and the player, treasures, and monsters were designated by various letters and signs. According to the plot, in the game the player had a faithful companion and friend - a dog who went on reconnaissance. And this dog was designated by the symbol @ . But it is not known whether at that time the symbol was already called a dog, or, on the contrary, this was the root cause of this name.

It is also worth noting that in Russia the symbol @ in addition to “dog”, they are also called “ram”, “ear”, “bun”, “frog” and even “muck”.

As already mentioned, in France, Spain and Portugal the symbol is called “arroba”. In America and Finland @ called “cat”, “mouse” in China and Taiwan, “monkey” in Poland, Croatia, Holland, Romania, Serbia, Germany and Slovenia, “snail” in Italy, “worm” or “mite” in Hungary, “rose” in Turkey, "whirlpool" in Israel, "rollmops" in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, "little pasta" in Greece, "crooked A" in Vietnam, "monkey A" in Bulgaria, "monkey tail" in the Netherlands, "cat tail" in Finland, “elephant trunk” in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and in Latvia and Lithuania – “et” and “eta”.

Any Internet user knows this symbol because it is directly associated with email. In Russia, it was nicknamed “Dog” (and also - krakozebra, a-with-a-tail, cheesecake, masyamba), in other countries this symbol is associated with various animals or objects. Far from it full list:

Bulgaria – klomba or maimunsko a (“monkey A”),
Netherlands – apenstaartje (“monkey tail”),
Israel - "strudel"
Spain – like the weight measure “arroba”,
France – the same weight unit “arrobase”,
Germany, Poland – monkey tail, monkey ear, paper clip, monkey,
Italy – “chiocciola” – snail,
Denmark, Norway, Sweden - “snabel-a” - “snout a” or elephant trunk,
Czech Republic, Slovakia – rollmops (marinated herring),
America, Finland - cat,
China, Taiwan - little mouse,
Türkiye - rose,
Serbia - "crazy A"
Vietnam – “crooked A”,
Ukraine - “ravlik” (snail), “doggie” or again “dog”.
On international language Esperanto all over the world, regardless of country, behind the @ symbol, the name “heliko” was established, which means “snail” in Esperanto.

The fact of its worldwide recognition was the introduction in February 2004 by the International Telecommunication Union of the Morse code for the @ symbol ( - - - ) for the convenience of transmitting email addresses. The code combines the Latin letters A and C and reflects their joint graphic writing.

It is not known for certain where the symbol came from. It has existed since at least the 15th century, and possibly earlier. According to the hypothesis of Professor Giorgio Stabile, 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 @. From this we can assume that the symbol came from the word “amphora”.

According to the American scientist Berthold Ullman, 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 Spanish, Portuguese, and French, the name of the symbol comes from the word “arroba” - an old Spanish measure of weight, ca. 15 kg., which is abbreviated in writing as the @ sign.

The modern official name of the symbol “commercial at” takes its origin from trade calculations, for example, 7 widgets @ $2 each = $14, which translates to 7 pieces. 2$ = 14$. Since this symbol was used in commerce, it was placed on the keyboards of the first typewriters and from there migrated to the computer keyboard.

The dog came to the Internet thanks to the creator of email, Tomlinson. He chose it as a character on the keyboard that could not appear in any name and cause confusion, as a separator for the username and email server. The first network address was tomlinson@bbn-tenexa on the Arpanet network.

Why is this symbol called “dog” in Russia? There are several versions of the origin of this funny name.

According to one, the icon really looks like a curled up dog. According to another, the abrupt sound of the English “at” is a bit like a dog barking. Still others manage to see in the outline of the symbol almost all the letters included in the word “dog”, well, perhaps with the exception of “k”.

The most common version sees the origin of this name in one of the very first computer games"Adventure" Back then, the displays were exclusively text, and the game's plot involved traveling through a text labyrinth. One of the characters in this game was a dog, which was represented by the @ symbol. Whether the name came from this game, or whether the symbol was chosen because of its name, it is now very difficult to find out. Maybe you know for sure?

So, @ - ligature meaning "at". The official name of the symbol is commercial at. Currently in Russian this symbol is most often called “ dog", especially when used in network services. Sometimes this symbol is mistakenly called ampersand(&) .

In the former USSR, this sign was unknown before the advent of the computer.
The name “dog” became widespread in connection with the appearance of a computer game, where the symbol @ ran across the screen and, according to the game script, meant a dog.
Another version of the origin of the name: on alphanumeric monitors of personal computers of the DVK series (1980s), the “tail” of the image of this symbol drawn on the screen was very short, which gave it a resemblance to a schematically drawn dog.
Looks like it's DVK-1

At the same time, translated from Tatar (and some other Turkic languages ​​in the territory of the former USSR) “et” means “dog”.

In Russia, users most often call the @ symbol a dog, which is why email addresses derived from personal names and surnames sometimes take on an unusual sound. In the 1990s, when the icon @ for the first time they tried to translate it into Russian, there were many equal options - “krakozyabra”, “squiggle”, “frog”, “ear” and others. True, at present they have practically disappeared.

In other countries, our dog is also called very skillfully and imaginatively. Go!

in Holland- "monkey tail" What if the monkey has a tail like this?

in Poland, Croatia, Romania- "monkey" Will there be no copyright?

in Finland- "cat's tail"

in France– “snail”

in Hungary- “caterpillar”, “worm” and “pig tail” One day, while walking through the forest, I noticed one on my sleeve... They called from China and asked me to stop yelling like that.

in Serbia- “ludo A” (crazy A)
Who remembers?)))

in Japan- “whirlpool” or “naruto” (after the name of Naruto’s whirlpool)
It appears once a day, when the water Pacific Ocean rush into the narrow strait. The rotation speed of the whirlpool reaches 20 km/h. The diameter of the funnel is up to 15 m.

in Israel- "strudel" I really want something sweet!

in China- "mouse"

in Norway– “kanelbolle” (a spirally twisted cinnamon bun, that is, a bun)
Norwegian cinnamon bun

In Germany the sign is literally called "monkey with a prehensile tail", but the German word Klammeraffe It also has a second, figurative meaning: this is the name given to a passenger on a motorcycle, hunched over in the second seat behind the driver. Adore German, a pleasure for me!

In Sweden and Denmark- “elephant trunk” or “and with a trunk”

in Spain– compared to the spiral-shaped candy popular on the island of Mallorca
Ensaimada - the sweet symbol of Mallorca

in the Czech Republic and Slovakia- rollmops (marinated herring)
By the way, this dish is common in many European countries, for example in Germany, Latvia and Norway

in Belarus, Ukraine, Italy- "snail"

Even in an international language Esperanto The email symbol got its name: “snail”. In general, almost everywhere this symbol was called one word or another based on the principle of similarity. But we don’t! It seems to me that it’s more interesting)) More mysterious!

Have a nice day everyone!

It's impossible to write an email message without the unusual @ sign. Everyone knows him as funny name“dog” and it is located on the same key as button 2.

Where did the "dog" icon come from?

Most people believe that the @ icon was invented by programmers. But this is far from true. A similar symbol was used long before the very concept of electronic communications. It is believed that similar signs in writing were used by monks in the Middle Ages.

The dog symbol on the keyboard appeared thanks to Tomlinson, who is better known as the creator of email. A symbol was required that would not appear in any name and would not cause confusion when writing email addresses. Today this sign has become so popular that it was even introduced into Morse code.

This sign called “dog” is better known in post-Soviet countries. In the West, it has completely different names. For example, in Italy – “snail”, in Norway – “elephant”, in America – “cat”, in Germany – “monkey”, in the Czech Republic – “pickled herring”, in Serbia – “crooked A”. The inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun approached this issue in the most original way. They called @ a "whirlpool".

Interesting! According to one version, the name “dog” was assigned to the symbol on the keyboard due to the fact that @ resembles this animal curled up into a ball. Although there are more interesting options.

How to write the @ sign?

This symbol is visible at first glance. But beginners often wonder how to write dog on a computer keyboard, since when pressed nothing happens. The trick is that this character is only available on the English keyboard layout.

Therefore, to write @, you need to:

1. In order to understand how to make a dog on the keyboard, you first need to change the input language. To do this, on the “Taskbar”, in the lower right corner, we find a sign that the Russian layout is enabled. This will be the symbol "RU".
2. Click on this letter sign. A mini-list will appear where you need to select “EN”.
3. Click on these letters.
4. After that, to press dog on the keyboard, you will need to use the key combination Shift and 2. The first is located at the bottom left, the second at the top.

All manipulations are very simple. The disadvantage is that if the user types in Russian, he will constantly have to change the input language, which is not very convenient.

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 International Union telecommunications introduced a code for the @ symbol ( - - - ) in Morse code for the convenience of transmitting 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 developing the mail 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 most simple solution such an 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). Basically he had to come up with new scheme addressing, which would identify not only 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 did 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 historical first The letter said 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.