It is called ‘hash’ in Australia. Why again ?
As in the shorthand for the weight measure, used mostly in butcher shops and grocery stores.
Ex. 1# = 1lb = 1 pound
I am not sure you are explaining how we get ‘hash’ from #.
In the UK I’ve not seen or heard of people calling # a pound sign
A pound sign would make people think of £ (currency)
On old printers the # would convert into £ if a particular dip switch was set
We would call # ‘hash’ although ‘number sign’ would be understood.
To quote the Wikipedia article:
So the unique US way actually makes sence but why call it a “Hash” sign outside the US ?
Etymology Online has an idea, but that sounds apocryphal, but Wikipedia does repeat the information.
The word hash seems to generally mean food that are chopped up and / or mixed together, so a symbol with lines going in every direction does fit the connotation.
No, he was answering your subject line question, explaining about how we get pound from ‘#’
FRDE - A butcher’s pound is different from a british pound sterling. Just sayin’
As far as ‘hatch’ - a # sound is an example of artistic crosshatching on a small scale - filling an area with lines in perpendicular directions
That’s all I’ve got so far.
I’m pretty sure that I’ve not seen a UK butcher using # instead of ‘lb’
Actually I’ve a suspicion that ‘hash’ might be derived from ‘hatch’
If they did, we’d be calling it a pound sign, too 
Nice one.
- having two pound signs would be interesting
was not a common sign in England before the advent of computers. I’ve always called it octothorpe
That’s the technical designation for that typographical character, in much the same sense that * is properly an asterisk, though people are as apt to say “star” if not more so.
The principal uses of the octothorpe seem to be as symbolic representation of (a) pound avoirdupois, the weight (as opposed to pound sterling the monetary value, which uses the script L), and (b) the term “number” as prefixed to a numeral, specifying the ordinal location in sequence. (“She placed #8 among over 500 girls entering the contest, a quite respectable showing.” “Please solve problem #6 and have your proof ready for discussion tomorrow.”)
This – “/” – by the way is a virgule.
Before it became popular as a lb sign I called it a number sign.
We used to call it “hash” here too, then in the sixties the damn hippies smoked all those buttons, so we had to call it something else.
is octothprpe and * is sextile in phone terminology, at least acording to a retired phone guy I am aquainted with.
Brian
Here in Colombia it means “number”, as in Calle 34 #10-12. The way we define addresses here.
That would fit in, date-wise, with the history of those terms given in Wikipedia - Number sign - Wikipedia
Native Southern Californian here. I grew up calling it a ‘number sign’.
Mrs scott62 here,
Civil Servants, or at least the ones I used to work with called “/” oblique and ‘#’ gate. I used to refer to ‘#’ as hash and got some funny looks from my colleagues!
So if “/” is a virgule what on earth is an oblique?!?!?!
So, is this how you write a pound of hash ##?
1# # £1