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The history of the creation of the sign "dog. Symbol "dog": history of appearance, meaning and correct name

In recent years, the Internet has become a part of our lives, every day most of us go to our favorite sites where they share their impressions, watch movies and listen to music. At the same time, the user types a huge number of different characters, sometimes without thinking about their meaning. One of these signs is - "@", otherwise this character is also called "dog" or "dog".

When was this sign first used and what does it mean?

The history of the symbol "dog" @

According to the researcher, this symbol appeared long before the Internet in the distant Middle Ages. The clergy who created the manuscripts used it to denote "direction", "approximation", "belonging", since in English this icon denotes the preposition "at", which can be translated into Russian as, "k", "v", "on".
Much earlier in 15 century, historians found out that the "@" sign had a different meaning. It was used to designate a measure of volume - an amphora, which was equal to 12,5 kg.

This symbol was again remembered in 1971 year, thanks to a man named Ray Tomlinson. When sending an email, it was suggested to separate the username from the hostname, essentially meaning the same "at" preposition. Since that time, this sign"@" essentially becomes the designation for the entire Internet and is used with great success on the World Wide Web today.

Why is the "@" symbol called "dog"?

It was called that at the beginning of the formation of the Russian part of the Internet, apparently it seemed to someone that the "@" symbol was somewhat reminiscent of a dog. In other countries, people's fantasy worked differently, it is called: "cinnamon bun", "cat", "elephant ", "snail", "monkey".
Many do not understand at all what the person was guided by when calling the symbol "@" - "dog". It looks like a snail, it even looks like an elephant, but it doesn’t “pull” at all like a dog. The maximum that this image looks like is like a small cat comfortably curled up in a ball.
American programmers in their circles call this symbol "dog shit", which in Russian means "dog poop". Most likely it was this expression that was the starting point of the Russian designation of the symbol "@". The word "turd" was not used and was discarded because it was clearly indecent. Therefore, the word "dog" remained.

In the 1990s, when the @ sign was first tried to be translated into Russian, there were many equal options - “krakozyabra”, “squiggle”, “frog”, “ear” and others. True, at present they have practically disappeared, and the “dog” has spread throughout the Runet and has remained, because any language strives to have only one universal word for anything. The remaining titles remain marginal, although there may be a great many of them. For example, in English, the @ symbol is called not only the words commercial at, but also mercantile symbol, commercial symbol, scroll, arobase, each, about, etc. Where did the association between the main computer icon and a person's friend come from? For many, the @ symbol really does look like a curled up dog.

There is an exotic version that the abrupt pronunciation of English at can resemble dog barking. However, a much more likely hypothesis links our symbol to the very old Adventure computer game. It had to travel through the maze, fighting with various unpleasant underground creatures. Since the game was textual, the player himself, the walls of the labyrinth, monsters and treasures were designated by various symbols (say, the walls were built from "!", "+" and "-"). The player in Adventure was accompanied by a dog that could be sent out on reconnaissance missions. It was denoted by the @ symbol. Perhaps it is thanks to this now forgotten computer game that the name "dog" has taken root in Russia.

The @ sign is everywhere in today's world, especially since it has become an integral part of an email address. But this symbol was part of the layout of the standard American typewriter long before the computer era, and became computer only because it was relatively little used. The @ sign is used in commercial calculations - in the meaning of "at the price" (at the rate). Let's say 10 gallons of oil at $3.95 per gallon would be shorthand: 10 gal of oil @ $3.95/gal. In English-speaking countries, the symbol is also used in science in the meaning of "at": for example, a density of 1.050 g/cm at 15 °C would be written: 1.050 g/cm @ 15 °C. In addition, the @ sign is loved and often used by anarchists due to its similarity to their symbol - "A in a circle."

However, its original origin is shrouded in mystery. From the point of view of the linguist Ullmann, the @ symbol was invented by medieval monks to shorten the Latin ad (“on”, “in”, “in relation to”, and so on), which is very similar to its current use. Another explanation is given by the Italian scientist Giorgio Stabile - he discovered this symbol in the records of the Florentine merchant Francesco Lapi for 1536 in the meaning of "amphora": for example, the price of one @ wine. Interestingly, the Spaniards and the Portuguese call the character in emails exactly “amphora” (arroba) - a word that the French, distorting, turned into arobase. However, in different countries there are a variety of names for the @ symbol, most often zoological. The Poles call it "monkey", the Taiwanese - "mouse", the Greeks - "duck", the Italians and Koreans - "snail", the Hungarians - "worm", the Swedes and Danes - "elephant trunk", the Finns - "cat's tail" or " meow sign, and the Armenians, like us, - "doggie". There are gastronomic names - "strudel" in Israel and "rollmops" (marinated herring) in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In addition, often this symbol is simply called "crooked A", or "A with a curl", or, as the Serbs, "crazy A". However, the most surprising of the modern stories associated with the @ symbol occurred in China, where the sign is tritely called "A in a circle." A few years ago, a Chinese couple gave this name to a newborn. Perhaps the sign began to be perceived as a hieroglyph symbolizing technological progress, and they decided that it would bring happiness and success to the young inhabitant of the Middle Kingdom.

On the Internet, the well-known character "dog" is used as a separator between a given user's name and a domain (host) name in email address syntax.

Fame

Some Internet figures consider this symbol to be a sign of a common human communication space and one of the most popular signs in the world.

One of the evidence of the worldwide recognition of this designation is the fact that in 2004 (in February) the International Telecommunication Union introduced a special code for @ designation into the general one. It combines the codes of two C and A, which displays their joint graphic writing.

The history of the symbol "dog"

The Italian researcher Giorgio Stabile managed to find in the archive owned by the Institute of Economic History in the city of Prato (which is near Florence), a document in which this sign is first found in writing. Such important evidence turned out to be a letter from a merchant from Florence, which was subsidized as early as 1536.

It refers to three merchant ships that arrived in Spain. As part of the ship's cargo, there were containers in which wine was transported, marked with an @ sign. After analyzing the data on the price of wines, as well as on the capacity of various medieval vessels, and comparing the data with the universal system of measures used at that time, the scientist concluded that the @ sign was used as a special measuring unit, which replaced the word anfora (in translation "amphora"). So since ancient times the universal measure of volume was called.

Bertolt Ullman's theory

Berthold Ullman is an American scientist who suggested that the @ symbol was developed by medieval monks in order to shorten the common word ad of Latin origin, which was often used as a universal term meaning "in relation to", "in", "on".

It should be noted that in French, Portuguese and Spanish, the name of the designation comes from the term "arroba", which in turn denotes the old Spanish measure of weight (about 15 kg), it was abbreviated in writing with the @ symbol.

Modernity

Many people are interested in the name of the symbol "dog". Note that the official modern name for this symbol sounds like "commercial at" and originates from the accounts in which it was used in the following context: [email protected]$2each = $14. This can be translated as 7 pieces of 2 dollars = 14 dollars

Since the symbol "dog" was used in business, it was placed on the keyboards of all typewriters. He was present even on the first typewriter in Underwood, which was released back in 1885. And only after a long 80 years, the symbol "dog" was inherited by the first computer keyboards.

Internet

Let's turn to the official history of the World Wide Web. She claims that the Internet symbol "dog" in e-mail addresses originated with an American engineer and computer scientist named Ray Tomlinson, who in 1971 was able to send the first ever electronic message over the network. In this case, the address had to be composed of two parts - the name of the computer through which the registration was made, and the username. Tomilson chose the symbol "dog" on the keyboard as the separator between the indicated parts, since it was not part of either computer names or user names.

Versions of the origin of the famous name "dog"

There are several possible versions of the origin of such a funny name in the world at once. First of all, the icon really does look a lot like a dog curled up.

In addition, the abrupt sound of the word at (the symbol for a dog in English is read that way) resembles a bit of a dog barking. It should also be noted that with a good imagination, you can consider in the symbol almost all the letters that make up the word "dog", except perhaps, excluding "k".

However, the most romantic can be called the following legend. Once upon a time, in that good time, when all computers were very large, and the screens were exclusively text, there was one popular game in the virtual kingdom, which was called "Adventure" (Adventure) reflecting its content.

Its meaning was to travel through a labyrinth created by a computer in search of various treasures. There were, of course, also battles with underground harmful creatures. The labyrinth on the display was drawn using the symbols "-", "+", "!", and the player, hostile monsters and treasures were indicated by various icons and letters.

Moreover, according to the plot, the player was friends with a faithful assistant - a dog, which could always be sent for reconnaissance in the catacombs. It was designated just by the @ sign. Was this the root cause of the now generally accepted name, or, conversely, was the icon chosen by the developers of the game, because it was already called that? The legend does not provide answers to these questions.

What is the name of the virtual "dog" in other countries?

It is worth noting that in our country the symbol "dog" is also called a ram, an ear, a bun, a frog, a dog, even a kryakozyabra. In Bulgaria, it is “maimunsko a” or “klomba” (monkey A). In the Netherlands, monkey tail (apenstaartje). In Israel, the sign is associated with a whirlpool ("strudel").

The Spaniards, French and Portuguese call the designation similar to the measure of weight (respectively: arroba, arrobase and arrobase). If you ask about what the dog symbol means among the inhabitants of Poland and Germany, they will answer you that it is a monkey, a paper clip, a monkey ear or a monkey tail. It is considered a snail in Italy, calling it chiocciola.

The least poetic names were given to the symbol in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, calling it “snout a” (snabel-a) or elephant tail (tailed a). The most appetizing name can be considered a variant of the Czechs and Slovaks, who consider the sign a herring under a fur coat (rollmops). Greeks also carry out associations with cuisine, calling the designation “little pasta”.

For many, this is still a monkey, namely for Slovenia, Romania, Holland, Croatia, Serbia (majmun; alternative: “crazy A”), Ukraine (alternatives: snail, dog, dog). The terms Lithuania (eta - “this”, borrowing with the addition of a Lithuanian morpheme at the end) and Latvia (et - “et”) were borrowed from English. The variant of the Hungarians, where this cute sign has become a tick, can lead to discouragement.

Cat and mouse is played by Finland (cat's tail), America (cat), Taiwan and China (mouse). The inhabitants of Turkey turned out to be romantics (rose). And in Vietnam, this badge is called "crooked A".

Alternative hypotheses

It is believed that the name of the designation "dog" in Russian speech appeared thanks to the famous DVK computers. In them, the "dog" appeared during the boot of the computer. Indeed, the designation resembled a small dog. All DVK users, without saying a word, came up with a name for the symbol.

It is curious that the original spelling of the Latin letter "A" suggested decorating it with curls, thus it was very similar to the current spelling of the "dog" sign. The translation of the word "dog" into the Tatar language sounds like "at".

Where else can you find a "dog"?

There are a number of services that use this symbol (other than email):

HTTP, FTP, Jabber, Active Directory. In IRC, the character is placed before the name of the channel operator, for example, @oper.

The sign has also been widely used in the main programming languages. In Java, it is used to declare an annotation. In C#, needed to escape characters in a string. The operation of taking an address is appropriately denoted in Pascal. For Perl, this is an array identifier, and in Python, respectively, a decorator declaration. The field identifier for a class instance is a Ruby sign.

As for PHP, here the "dog" is used to suppress the output of an error, or to warn about a task that has already occurred at the time of execution. The symbol became the prefix of indirect addressing in MCS-51 assembler. In XPath, this is shorthand for the attribute axis, which selects a set of attributes for the current element.

Finally, Transact-SQL expects a local variable name to start with @ and a global variable name to start with two @. In DOS, thanks to the character, the echo for the executed command is suppressed. The action designation as echo off mode is usually applied before the mode is entered to prevent a specific command from being displayed on the screen (for clarity: @echo off).

So we looked at how many aspects of virtual and real life depend on an ordinary symbol. However, let's not forget that it has become the most recognizable precisely because of the emails that are sent by the thousands every day. It can be assumed that today you will receive a letter with a "dog", and it will bring only good news.

Every day a person comes across a wide variety of symbols, and they, as a rule, are generally accepted and equally understandable to people in different countries speaking different languages. An arrow, a heart, a dollar sign... Our review contains the most interesting stories of the appearance of these and many other symbols.

1. Dollar sign

The ubiquitous dollar sign ($) is actually the peso sign. As a result of the rapid development of the mining industry in Central and South America, Spain was in the hands of huge reserves of silver. This allowed the real de a ocho (better known as the peso de ocho or "eight parts") to become a truly international currency and to push older coins (such as the Czech thaler) out of the international market.

The Spanish peso was adopted for trade in Europe, America and the East. Merchants replaced the word "peso" with the abbreviation "PS", and soon with the abbreviation in which these letters were written on top of each other. By 1770, the abbreviated form of the old abbreviation "PS" had become the symbol "$", which was then adopted as a currency symbol at the formation of the United States.

2. Heart symbol

The earliest heart was depicted by the Cro-Magnons during the last ice age, but this symbol acquired its modern meaning only during the Middle Ages. Some researchers claim that initially this symbol denoted the image of a silphium pod (spicy herb), which looks like a heart.

The city-state of Cyrene even minted coins with the image of this pod. Others argue that this modern heart symbol is derived from the medieval Sacred Heart, which symbolized the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Still others believe that the symbol was based on ancient ideas about the human heart, which was considered an organ with three chambers, two round on top and spiky on the bottom.

3. Arrow symbol

The use of the arrow symbol as a sign of direction dates back to Ancient Greece, where the direction was indicated by the image of a footprint pointing in the right direction. In the ancient Greek city of Ephesus, it was precisely such a footprint and a woman's face depicted on the pavement that showed the direction to the local brothel.

On medieval signboards and indicators, a hand was often drawn with a finger pointing in the required direction. This symbol first appeared in the 12th century and became popular in Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries. The arrow was not used until the 18th century, and after its introduction, it was originally used on maps to indicate the direction of the flow of a river.

4. Mathematical plus and minus signs

Symbols for addition and subtraction first appeared in the 15th century. It is assumed that the sign "+" was originally one of the ways to write the Latin word "et" (translated, "and"). The astronomer Nicole d'Orem was the first to use such an abbreviation in the 14th century. The “-” sign may have originated among merchants who crossed out the next unloaded product from the list. Interestingly, the modern division sign was originally used to denote subtraction by northern European mathematicians until the late 16th century.

5. Asterisk and cross

The symbol, which has become extremely popular due to its use on the Internet, was once almost never seen or was used in tandem with a cross. Both characters were traditionally used for footnotes, to indicate dates of birth and death in European typography, and to indicate long and short pauses in Gregorian chant. Some argue that the origins of the star can be traced back over 5000 years, all the way back to ancient Sumer, where this cuneiform symbol allegedly represented "paradise" or "deity".

Others, however, consider this connection dubious and attribute the first mention of the asterisk and cross to the Library of Alexandria. Allegedly, the cross was first invented by the grammarian of the Library of Alexandria Zenodotus, who used it for marginal notes. The asterisk came later and was invented by the Alexandrian scholar Aristarchus of Samothrace, who edited the works of Zenodotus.

6. Exit sign

There are two main exit sign conventions around the world: the United States uses the word "EXIT" written in bold red type, while most of the rest of the world uses a pictogram of a running person exiting through a door on a green background. The American sign appeared in 1911 and was designed after a fire that killed 146 workers in a Manhattan garment factory.

Over the next few decades, graphic symbols came into vogue. The Japan Fire Safety Association held a competition for a new national emergency exit sign, which was won by designer Yukio Ota featuring a running man.

7. Symbol of radiation

The now universally recognized radiation hazard symbol was invented in 1946 by a team working at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. The sign was originally purple on a blue background (it is now black on a yellow background). The original colors were chosen for very specific reasons.

The purple color was never used for markings, i.e. a radioactive container could not be confused with any other. Blue, on the other hand, was not found in laboratory equipment, so it was noticeable from afar. One of the scientists who created the sign was even against replacing the blue background of the sign with yellow, arguing that yellow symbols are much more common, so a yellow sign would not evoke such a sense of danger.

8. Stop sign

When cars first began to appear in the United States, there were almost no signs on the roads and real anarchy reigned: cars, horses and cyclists drove at random. The first stop sign appeared in Detroit, Michigan in 1915. It looked like a simple 0.6-meter sheet of metal with black lettering on a white background. In 1923, the Mississippi Highway Association developed a set of guidelines for sign design based on the level of danger.

The more sides the sign had, the more potentially dangerous the situation was. A round "Stop" sign (with an infinite number of sides) was placed in front of railway crossings, and an octagonal sign was used in the second most dangerous situations. The pentagonal signs were just warning signs.

9. Symbol of a man and a woman

The standard explanation for the male and female symbols is that they were derived from Greek mythology and represent the shield of Mars and the mirror of Venus, objects traditionally associated with male and female, respectively. However, there is little evidence linking these specific objects to contemporary symbols, and the actual story is much more complex. In ancient astrology and alchemy, various celestial objects were associated with various metals.

The Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn, respectively, were associated with gold, silver, iron, mercury, copper, tin and lead. This system was recognized by the 18th-century naturalist Carl Linnaeus, who was born before the development of the modern system for naming chemical elements, which uses letters taken from the Greek or Latin alphabets (this system was developed in 1814). Prior to this, chemists often used the same symbols used by medieval alchemists. Carl Linnaeus used the symbols of Venus and Mars to indicate the sex of plants.

10. Question mark

There are a number of theories regarding the origin of the question mark. The most popular explanation is that its style comes from the Latin letters "q" and "o" (the first and last letters of the Latin word quæstio (question or search). Once upon a time, at the end of each interrogative sentence, the abbreviation qo was written, which later turned into a ligature - question mark).

Other researchers believe that the sign came from Egypt and was formed in the likeness of a bent tail of a cat. Another theory is that the English scholar Alcuin of York first used the question mark when he was working at the court of Charlemagne and developing a new punctuation system.

We hope that it will be interesting for inquisitive readers to learn about.

Good afternoon dear friends, today we will talk about dog symbol why it is called that, where it is located on the keyboard, a little history about the creation @ symbol. A lot of interesting and new things are waiting for you in this article. So, let's begin.

In my opinion, it is very difficult to meet a person who has never encountered @ dog symbol, because this is one of those symbols that we most often use on the Internet.

No wonder users call it the main symbol of the network, maybe this is an exaggeration, but in any case there is an indisputable fact proving its worldwide significance. Once upon a time, the International Telecommunication Union put the code for @ in Morse code, thus making it easier to transmit email addresses. This was at the beginning of 2004. The code combined the Latin letters A and C and showed their joint spelling.

In the Russian alphabet, A and C were combined to designate a sign, since we pronounce the Latin letter C as “tse”. The letter A is denoted - , and the letter C / C - - -

So we get the result - - - - -

How long ago did the dog symbol appear

If you are interested in knowing how this unusual icon appeared, then we will have to move several centuries ago, namely to the 15th century, although no one knows the exact date of its appearance, and scientists still have not solved this riddle.

The famous professor Giorgio Stabile put forward his own opinion on this issue. He believed that the icon appeared around the 16th century, because already then in one of the documents that was written by a Florentine merchant there was “the price of one A of wine”, and the letter A, in connection with the traditions of past centuries, was decorated with a curlicue, which definitely gave it a resemblance With @. He found the document in the archives of the Institute of Economic History of the city of Prato. It was a merchant's letter dated 1536. Another scholar, Berthold Ullman, had a different idea about the appearance of this badge. He said that it was invented by monks who lived in the Middle Ages in order to shorten the word "ad", which had several meanings, such as "in", "on", "before", "y". The letter d was made from tails to the left side, as if combining two letters in this way.

In languages such as French, Spanish symbol takes its origins from the name of the old Spanish measure of weight - "arroba" (about 15 kg.)

It may seem surprising to you, but the official name of the symbol in our time is the commercial at. It originates from accounts. For example, 5 widgets @ $3 each = $15 translates as 5 pieces of $3 each = $15. Previously, this technique was used in the Renaissance to attract the attention of buyers. The badge was placed in front of the price of the goods. This symbol was placed on the keyboards of typewriters, and then took its place on computers.

I can't rule out an interesting coincidence. In the 16th century, messengers who carried mail began to use the post horn. A little earlier, they were used by butchers to announce their arrival in some area in order to purchase livestock. And already in 1712 they made a ban on the use of postal horns for persons who were not related to the transportation of mail. The ban was in effect in a number of countries. In Germany, even before the start of World War II, horse-drawn passenger mail was equipped, including mail horns. Currently, the mail horn can be seen on various emblems, logos that are directly related to the delivery of mail. And now look at him, some resemblance to @ sign visible.

And this icon gained such wide popularity thanks to Tomlinson, the "father" of electronic network mail. It was his choice of @, and when asked why he chose "curl", his answer was simple: "I was looking for a character on the keyboard that could not occur in any name and cause confusion." He needed a "dog" at the moment when he created the Arpanet messaging system, or, as it is called, the great-grandmother of the Internet. In order to make a new addressing system, thanks to which it is possible to identify recipients and computers on which there were mailboxes, there was a need for a separator, so in general, by chance, the choice fell on @, [email protected] became the first address on the network where you can see the "dog".

Think about it, we don't use this sign anywhere other than an email address. It is used in writing programs, in PHP, in Transact-SQL. And if it were not for Ray Tomplison, then ordinary users would not have begun to actively use it.

Why the dog icon?

Now let's talk about such an interesting name for this symbol. “Dog” he is most often called in Russia, and this allowed the publication of new original jokes, fables, which were used even in KVN. But why is the dog a symbol and not some other animal? Here are some of the more popular versions:

1) If you look closely and turn on the fantasy, then indeed in this icon you can see a curled up sleeping dog, which is why the dog symbol is obtained.

2) The sound "at" in English is vaguely reminiscent of barking.

3) And the most unusual thing, looking closely at the symbol, you can see the outlines of almost all the letters that are included in the word dog, except for "k", which is why they called the dog icon.

4) There is an opinion that the nickname “dog” was given to the symbol thanks to the computers of the DVK, in which this symbol appeared during loading, only with a shortened “tail”. Unconditionally, everyone associated the sign with a dog.

And here is another version, probably the most inspiring and romantic of all. It talks about how, in ancient times, when they played the game "Adventure" on giant computers. In it, you could travel through a fictional labyrinth, look for treasures and fight monsters. The labyrinth was drawn with symbols and everything else in the form of other icons and letters. And the most interesting thing is that the player had a faithful dog, which, as you probably guessed, was indicated by the @ symbol. Whether this was the very first reason for the name of such a badge, or whether this dog was designated because this badge was already called that, unfortunately, all this remains a mystery.

But in addition to the “dog” in Russia, @ is also called a frog, an ear, a kryakozyabra, in general, who has enough imagination for what.

People from other countries are also not inferior in creativity, and as soon as they call this poor badge:

Hungary is a worm

Greece - duck

Turkey - rose

Israel - "strudel"

China, Taiwan - mouse

And this list is endless. Most importantly, this cute icon evokes the association of something cozy for everyone, it can be a curled up animal or a sweet roll.