In Danish, it's "snabel-a", ie "[elephant's] trunk-a". # was at a time when a popular youth radio show had an IRC channel called "havelåge" or "garden gate", but "firkant" (simply "square") was and remains in wide use in voice response systems. Neither symbol had as far as I know any mainstream use before this time.
# in internet-contexts has transitioned to "hashtag" (remains "firkant" in voice response), but as far as I know snabel-a is still in use (I just realised that I haven't participated in a Danish verbal transmission of an email address in quite a while).
In Bulgaria it's gone through several disjointed phases. You can use either "кльомба" (klyomba, I have no idea what it's supposed to mean), "маймунка" (maymunka, monkey), "маймунско А" (maymunsko A, monkey A) or "at" to refer to it.
In Swedish you can hear "snabel-A" (trunk-A, same as in Danish) or "at".
In Finland we call it "kissanhäntä" (cat's tail) or "miukumauku". "Miu" and "mau" are actually cat's meows, so "miukumauku" is kind of a "a meow, a meow" with two different words.
Nowadays it's usually called "ät-merkki" as in "at-sign" as "at" is spelled in Finnish.
I was just going to say the same for Russian, but you beat me to it. Never really thought about why we have named it that way though, it was always something I just accepted... seems weird now.
The circle bit looks like a monkey tail, simple as that. And there was no need for a shorter word, as it really wasn't used in common speech or writing (the French "à" was/is used in the commercial sense).
My guess used to be that it started as a "Klammer-A" ("a in a bracket") and that at some point the joking extension from A to Affe (monkey or ape, everyday German does not make a distinction) went viral, supported by the tail-like shape. Now that I know that the monkey connection even exists in languages without the a -> Affe link I'm not so confident anymore.
I can only speculate but I believe it is due to the fact that it kind of looks like a paper clip shaped like a monkey ear (speculation on my part but I've heard that before).
Klammer is short for Büroklammer (= paper clip) and Affe is monkey (or ape).
It's a bit like how a lot of people refer to '#' as 'hashtag' these days, without knowing about 'the pound symbol' or 'sharp' (if you are a musician). :)
It's a different symbol than the sharp, and I don't blame anyone for not knowing it's rarely used for that purpose these days.
I had a web design professor who said its "true" name was octothorpe, and while various sources confirm that, I've never heard anyone else call it that. Another student in the same class once called it the "tic tac toe symbol."
Ok, the true pedants can tilt their head a little to see the difference between a # and a [Edit: Hmm it seems HN doesn't support pasting of extended characters such as the musical 'sharp'?!?]...
I will have to change the pronunciation in my C# programming books to 'C-hash' instead of 'C-sharp'... :)
I think you're missing the point. There's the shape and there's the symbol.
An octagon is a shape. A stop sign is a symbol that happens to be an octagon. Inversely, an octagon in the context of street signs represents "stop."
The octothorpe, used in music, represents "sharp." In front of a number it represents "pound." In front of a string on twitter it represents "hashtag."
AFAIK the typographical/visual differences are basically irrelevant. It's just a different symbol with a different meaning in different contexts, all represented with the same shape.
In my opinion the sharp symbol is very different from the hash symbol #. If you argue that these two are the same symbol, then so would be "d" and "q".
> In my opinion the sharp symbol is very different from the hash symbol #.
Yes, the pound sign is different than the sharp symbol, just as single quotes are different than apostrophes, and guillemets are different than less-than and greater-than symbols, and the flat symbol is different than "b".
Now, limitations of first common US typewriters and then the ASCII character set have led to conventions where some of these have been used in place of the other because the correct symbol wasn't available, but that's different than the symbols being the same, and in most modern contexts, the correct symbol is usually available.
But I'm guessing that you've figured out after reading your own comment that the musical sharp symbol is not rendered in all mediums (including HN). Were I required to search for reference material related to Microsoft's C-like language using proper typography, I'd have to go cut-and-paste the symbol from a WikiPedia page because I don't know how to get it from keyboard to textfield otherwise.
IMO, yeah, maybe not the best choice by MSFT. But pragmatically, we all know what "#" means in that context even if it's not correct. All the Monday-morning-quarterbacking in the world isn't going to change that. So I'm as all for an academic discussion as the next person, but that's all it is.
Where I'm from (UK) this has always been called the "hash" symbol. Although British Telecom voice prompts insisted on calling it the "square" key for a while.
To hash means to chop up, which is a possible origin. To [cross] hatch means to colour in a space with [crossed] parallel lines, which is also possible.
"Pound symbol" always confuses me. £ is the symbol for Pound sterling, and on UK keyboards that's at the same place (shift-3) as the # is on the US keyboards that we use in the Netherlands.
It's as if people who call # the pound sign are from the UK and typed shift-3 on someone else's keyboard without actually noticing what showed up on the screen.
# after the number is widely understood to refer to pounds (as in weight) in the US. Not sure how common that use is these days but most people would understand what was meant if they saw it.
A symbol that, after many decades of living in the U. S., I'm seeing for the first time just today. In my experience, if it's not written as "lb." or "lbs.", a hash is often used: "#".
I have to admit that possibility did cross my mind shortly after I posted my sibling comment. That said, I've never actually seen it used that way (only ever "lb")
It has always been called hash in some regions/contexts. I'm pretty sure the shape itself (i.e. regardless of context) is called an octothorpe. So no it's not at all like that.
It's a hash, not a hashtag. The hashtag is the # plus a "tag" word. When someone says "hashtag foo", they went spelling it out
# + foo,
they are saying "this is a hashtag, not a regular word in my setencen; the tag is foo" and the # is silent.
1995 was such a weird year. My biggest dream was to have a computer at home. Didn't even know yet that internet was a thing that existed.
Then around 1997, the internet was something that you went to the library to use. And we finally had a computer at home. I remember how long it took us to figure out that the mouse tail should point up, not down.
I did buy an Atari 2500St for college, and didn't tell anyone. I felt like I was cheating.
While all the other students were griping about typing, or paying a typist; I just hit print.
My girlfrined in college hated the "thing". Yes--she called it the "thing". "Leave that thing alone."
She is now a millionaire, and head of technology at some company.
After college, I bought a small electronic typewritter, that did word processing.
I hated everything about computing, besides word processing, and didn't see the need for a computer if I wasen't in school.
Plus, I tried programming, and I Knew I didn't want to spend my life in front of a screen, for anyone, for any amout of money. I hated those 500 page computer programming phone books. I just hated computing on so many levels, it's ironic now.
I honesly didn't get the magic in programming until later on--a lot later on. Well that Atari went right into the garbage in the 90's. Yes--ouch! I so wish I had it now.
I don't think people realize, in the 90's, it was really a gamble if the average person would buy a computer, even a GUI based system. Some people just hated everything about them. They were just so unsexy. So dry to many of us. So boring. So tedious, and never seemed to just work.
I had a friend remind me in the 90's computing is an art too. He is now a multimillionaire. We worked at a chit job, and his friend's said, "My dad is willing to invest in a gaming company for us. Do you want to join?" He did have to think about it. In a few years he was set for life. He didn't ask me to join them, but I probally would have turned the offer down. I idnt get games, nor did I think the business would last more than a few months. Awe--again, so wrong!
My mom was one of the first to buy a used blue Mac, and she loved every thing about it. It was then, I knew they would be big, and I was so wrong. I figured if she was willing to try them, they are making strides, at least Apple.
I still didn't find the magic in computing/programming until about 15 years ago--sadly.
To be fair, I was 9 and didn't know any other words in English either.