Up and @ ‘em: A Symbol of the Digital Age
On 5 March 2016, Ray Tomlinson passed away. He’s not a household name—at least not in most households—but his work has shaped how we communicate every day. Often credited as the father of email, Tomlinson is also the man who introduced the @ symbol to internet communications. We’ve been @-ing each other across platforms ever since.
But the symbol’s history stretches back much further than its digital debut in 1971. It’s been around so long that its exact origins remain a bit of a mystery.
Merchants and Monks
One popular theory traces @ to medieval monks, who, mindful of ink and space, abbreviated the Latin ad (meaning at, toward, by, or about) into a single symbol.
Another theory suggests it was merchant shorthand for “each at,” used to describe the unit price of goods. Look closely and you can see how @ could resemble an ‘a’ wrapped in an ‘e.’ Smithsonian Magazine supports this idea, noting that a 1536 letter by Florentine merchant Francesco Lapi used @ to denote units of wine called amphorae.
A Tale of a Tail
There are plenty of curly tales behind this curly symbol. It’s unique in that there’s no universal name for it—each language puts its own spin on the description.
English plays it safe with “at symbol,” but other languages go wild with imagination. Dutch speakers call it apenstaartje (“little monkey tail”), Greeks say παπάκι (papaki – “duckling”), the Welsh opt for malwen (“snail”), and in Taiwan it’s 小老鼠 (xiǎo lǎoshǔ – “little mouse”).
@ You, @ Me
Today, the @ is everywhere. Every email address uses it to bridge the username with the domain. Whether tied to your workplace, university, or webmail provider, chances are your name follows an @.
And with the rise of social media, its use has exploded. X puts it front and centre; Instagram and Facebook use it to tag users—even if the symbol itself doesn’t always appear in the final post. What once connected a person to a server now connects people to each other.
So, thank you, Ray Tomlinson, for your gift of connectivity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v16jpzy4ZI
What are some interesting cultural variations in the names for the “@” symbol, and how do these names reflect the creativity and uniqueness of different languages?
Dear Perpustakaan Online,
Thank you for your very interesting question.
To be honest, I had not given this topic much thought because, well, I write and edit in English, and we all know that @ is simply called the “at” symbol.
However, when we look at other languages, we realise how uncreative this term actually is.
In my native language (Flemish), @ is called apenstaartje, which means “little monkey tail.”
I also know a bit of French (a perk of growing up in Belgium), and the French call it arobase. Quite frankly, I had to look up its origin, and it appears to come from the Spanish term arroba, which was a unit of weight.
The Germans call it Klammeraffe, which means “clinging monkey,” probably referring to how a monkey’s tail swirls around a branch, just like the curl in @ clings to the letter “a.”
The Italians use chiocciola, meaning “snail.” It makes sense because @ looks like the spiral of a snail’s shell.
I’m sure there are many other interesting variations, but the main takeaway is that the English term for @ (“at”) lacks creativity compared to other cultures.
Thanks again for your question. I will explore a few other languages and add this topic to my list of future blog posts!