The ubiquitous @ symbol, so necessary in e-mail, is called - by everyone I know, anyway, the “at” or “at symbol.” But it existed before E-mail became common. What did it used to be called?
As far as I know, it’s always been the at symbol. It was originally used to denote the price of things in invoices, etc., e.g., “7 items @ 35 cents = $2.45”.
If I recall correctly, in German it’s called a “Monkey’s ass.” Only in German.
The symbol @ means “at the rate of”.
Or more precisely, it used to stand for “at the rate of” in the context that Giles mentioned. Easily converted to email usage, of course.
I find it odd that as recently as 1990, Merriam-Webster had no definition for “at” referring to the sign, and I’m pretty sure that’s what I heard it called in my typing class in the late 1970s.
However it does include lesser known symbol names, such as the virgule and the obelus. But no “at.”
The funny thing is that the Indians I know still insist on pronouncing it as “at the rate of” – “My E-mail I.D. is prem V at-the-rate-of gogo dot com.” It’s kind of weird.
@ctually, it’s Klammeraffe (meaning “spider monkey”)
Now that you brought it up, I think I’ll call it an Affenarsch from now on, just to see the looks on my friends’ faces.
In the Demolished Man, Alfred Bester imagines a future in which such symbols are used to spell out parts of names. The name “Atkinson” was written as “@kinson” in that novel, so obviously people knew and used the symbol as “at”. It came out in about 1954, IIRC.
I have always been here before.
One more thought: The Merriam-Webster dictionary that I bought last year has a separate entry for “at sign” (my 1990 version did not) and shows 1982 as the year first attested. Obviously, the term was in use before then, but that’s apparently the first time it showed up in print.