Deep-rooting '@'

DIGGING FOR THE ORIGIN OF ‘@’
(It’s not like digging your nose for gold)

How many times you have typed the symbol @ the one just on the numerical key 2. Have you ever thought where it came and why its called at the rate, or is it not called like that?

The now ubiquitous symbol traces its roots to English grocers and accountants who used the symbol to indicate the cost per unit of anything. Outside England it didn’t mean much. And that’s why most non English keyboards don’t have the @ symbol before internet and emails became common.

The Sri-Lankan’s have no particular or official word for that. Moving to Africans where the descendents of the Dutch settlers call it as ‘aapsert’. (They speak Afrikaans). In the native Dutch aapsert means Monkey tail.

In the Middle East, the Arabs continue to remain clueless about what to call it. Some now call it ‘fi’ - a literal translation of ‘at’ in Arabic.

There is another school that refers to the symbol as ‘othon’ which means ear in English.

The Czech refers to @ as ‘zavinac’. In the native Czech it means pickled herring! The Germans chose to go the Afrikaans way and some call it ’afenschwanz’ or monkeys tail. Yet others in Germany call it ‘klammeraffe’ or hanging monkey.

Japanese call it ‘atto maaku’ -the mark.

The Thai call it ‘ai tua yiukyiu’ - literally which means wriggling worm like character.

And atlast not the least the some native Dutch speakers like to call it as ‘apeklootje’ – or a little monkeys testicles.