On the Internet, the well-known symbol "dog" (@) is used as a separator between the name of this user and the name of the domain (host) in the syntax of email addresses.
Fame
Some Internet figures consider this symbol 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 in Morse code for the designation @. It combines the codes of two Latin letters: C and A, which displays their joint graphic spelling.
The story of the dog symbol
The Italian researcher Giorgio Stabile was able to find in the archive, which was owned by the Institute of Economic History in the city of Prato (near Florence), a document in which this sign first appears in writing. Such important evidence was a letter from a merchant from Florence, which was subsidized another 1536 year.
It refers to three merchant ships arriving in Spain. The vessel’s cargo included containers carrying wine marked with the @ sign. After analyzing the data on the price of wine, as well as on the capacity of various medieval vessels, and comparing the data with the general system of measures used in those days, the scientist concluded that the @ sign was used as a special unit of measure that replaced the word anfora (translated "amphora"). So from ancient times the universal measure of volume was called.
Bertold Ullman's Theory
Bertold Ullman is an American scholar who suggested that the @ symbol was developed by medieval monks to reduce the common ad word of Latin origin, which was often used as a universal term meaning “in relation”, “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 means the old Spanish measure of weight (about 15 kg), it was abbreviated in the letter 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 accounts in which it was used in the following context: 7widgets @ $ 2each = $ 14. It can be translated as 7 pieces for 2 dollars = 14 dollars
Since the “dog” symbol was used in business, it was placed on the keyboards of all typewriters. He was even present on the first typewriter in the history of mankind , Underwood, which was released back in 1885. And only after a long 80 years did the first computer keyboards inherit the “dog” symbol.
the Internet
Let us turn to the official history of the World Wide Web. She claims that the Internet symbol “dog” arose in electronic mail addresses thanks to an American engineer and computer engineer named Ray Tomlinson, who in 1971 managed to send the first ever electronic message through 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 “dog” symbol on the keyboard as a separator between the indicated parts, since he was not part of either computer names or user names.
Versions of the origin of the famous name "dog"
In the world there are several possible versions of the origin of such a funny name. First of all, the icon really looks very much like a dog curled up.
In addition, the jerky sound of the word at (the dog symbol in English reads this way) resembles a little 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, except for “k”.
However, the following legend can be called the most romantic. Once upon a time, at that good time, when all the computers were very large, and the screens were exclusively text, there was once a popular game in the virtual kingdom that got its name reflecting its content - “Adventure”.
Its meaning was a journey through a maze created by a computer in search of various treasures. There were, of course, 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, who could always be sent for reconnaissance to the catacombs. It was designated just by the @ sign. Was this the root cause of the now generally accepted name, or, conversely, the developers of the game chose the icon, because it was so called? The legend does not give 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, ear, bun, frog, dog, or even a rattle. In Bulgaria, it is “Maimunsky a” or “klomba” (monkey A). In the Netherlands - a monkey tail (apenstaartje). In Israel, the mark is associated with a whirlpool (“strudel”).
Spaniards, French and Portuguese call the designation the same way as a measure of weight (respectively: arroba, arrobase and arrobase). If you ask what the dog symbol means for residents of Poland and Germany, they will answer you that it is a monkey, a paper clip, a monkey ear or a monkey tail. They consider him 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 ivory tail (tailed a). The most appetizing name can be considered a variant of Czechs and Slovaks, who consider the sign a herring under a fur coat (roller coats). Associations with the cuisine are carried out by the Greeks, calling the designation "little pasta."
For many, this is still a monkey, namely for Slovenia, Romania, Holland, Croatia, Serbia (maјmun; alternative: “crazy A”), Ukraine (alternatives: snail, dog, dog). From the English language borrowed the term Lithuania (eta - “this”, borrowing with the addition of the Lithuanian morpheme at the end) and Latvia (et - “et”). The option of Hungarians, where this cute sign has become a tick, can lead to despondency.
Finland (the cat's tail), America (the cat), Taiwan and China (the mouse) “play” cat and mouse. The romantics were the inhabitants of Turkey (rose). And in Vietnam, this icon is called "crooked A".
Alternative hypotheses
There is an opinion that the name “dog” in Russian speech appeared thanks to the famous DCK computers. In them, a "dog" appeared during computer startup. And indeed the designation resembled a small dog. All DCK users, without saying a word, came up with a name for the symbol.
It is curious that the original version of the Latin letter “A” implied decoration with curls, thereby it was very similar to the current spelling of the sign “dog”. Translation of the word "dog" into the Tatar language sounds like "et."
Where else can you meet the "dog"?
There are a number of services using this symbol (except email):
HTTP, FTP, Jabber, Active Directory. In IRC, the character is placed before the name of the channel operator, for example, @oper.
It has been widely used in major programming languages. In Java, it is used to declare annotations. In C #, it is necessary to escape characters in a string. The operation of taking the address is accordingly indicated in Pascal. For Perl, this is the identifier of the array, and in Python, accordingly, the declaration of the decorator. The field identifier for the class instance is the Ruby character.
As for PHP, here the “dog” is used in order to suppress the error output, or to warn about a task that already happened at the time of execution. The symbol became the prefix of indirect addressing on the MCS-51 assembler. In XPath, this is an abbreviation for the attribute axis, which selects many attributes for the current element.
Finally, Transact-SQL assumes that the name of the local variable should start with @, and the name of the global variable should start with two @. In DOS batch files , due to the symbol, echo repetition for an executable command is suppressed. The designation of the action, as the echo off mode, is usually used before entering the mode 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 character. However, let's not forget that he became the most recognizable precisely thanks to emails that are sent by thousands daily. We can assume that today you will receive a letter with a "dog", and it will bring only good news.