On the Internet, the well-known symbol "dog" is used as a separator between the name this user and the name of the domain (host) in the address syntax Email.
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
Back to official history World Wide Web. She claims that the Internet symbol "dog" originated in electronic postal addresses Thanks to an American engineer and computer scientist named Ray Tomlinson, who in 1971 managed to send the first electronic message in history 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 character.
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 a regular character. 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.
The @ symbol is called differently in different countries. The poor fellow did not find a single name, but he acquired many funny names. Here are some of them:
Bulgaria - klomba or maimunsko a ("monkey A"),
Netherlands - apenstaartje ("monkey's tail"),
Israel - "strudel",
Spain - like the measure of weight "arroba",
France - the same measure of weight "arrobase",
Germany, Poland - monkey tail, monkey ear, paperclip, monkey,
Italy - "chiocciola" - snail,
Denmark, Norway, Sweden - "snabel-a" - "snout a" or elephant trunk,
Czech Republic, Slovakia - rollmops (marinated herring),
America, Finland - cat,
China, Taiwan - little mouse,
Turkey - rose,
Serbia - "crazy A",
Vietnam - "twisted A",
Ukraine - “ravlik” (snail), “doggie” or, again, “dog”.
The fact of its worldwide recognition was the introduction in February 2004 by the International Telecommunication Union in the alphabet morse code for the @ symbol (. — — . — .), for the convenience of transferring e-mail addresses. The code combines the Latin letters A and C and reflects their joint graphic writing.
Where the symbol came from is not known for certain. It has existed since at least the 15th century, and possibly even earlier. According to Professor Giorgio Stabile's hypothesis, a 16th-century document written by a Florentine merchant mentioned "the price of one A of wine" (possibly amphoras).
At the same time, the letter A, according to the then tradition, was decorated with a curl and looked like @. From this we can assume that the symbol came from the word "amphora".
According to the American scientist Berthold Ullman, the @ sign was invented by medieval monks to shorten the Latin word "ad", which was often used as a universal word meaning "on", "in", "in relation to", etc.
How did the @ symbol - a dog - come about?
In Spanish, Portuguese, French, the name of the symbol comes from the word "arroba" - an old Spanish measure of weight, approx. 15 kg., which was abbreviated on the letter with the @ sign.
The modern official name for the symbol "commercial at" comes from commercial calculations, for example, 7 widgets @ $2 each = $14, which translates to 7 widgets. 2$ = 14$. Since this symbol was used in trade, it was placed on the keyboards of the first typewriters and from there migrated to the computer keyboard.
The dog came to the Internet thanks to the creator of e-mail, Tomlinson. He chose it as a character on the keyboard that could not be found in any name and cause confusion, as a separator for the username and email server. First network address was the address [email protected] in the Arpanet network.
How did the @ symbol - a dog - come about?
Why is this symbol called “dog” in Russia? There are several versions of the origin of this funny name.
According to one, the icon really looks like a curled up dog. On the other hand, the abrupt sound of the English “at” is a bit like a dog barking. Still others manage to consider almost all the letters included in the word “dog” in the inscriptions of the symbol, well, perhaps, with the exception of “k”.
The most common version sees the origin of this name in one of the very first computer games "Adventure" ("Adventure"). Back then, the displays were purely text-based, and the story of the game had to travel through a text labyrinth.
One of the characters in this game was a dog, which was denoted by the @ symbol. Whether the name came from this game, or whether the symbol was chosen because of its name, is now very difficult to find out. Maybe you know for sure?
The dog icon familiar to every web user has been around for much longer than email. But it wasn't until the advent of the Internet that the rounded squiggle became widely known: 2 billion times a day @ takes its place between the sender's name and domain name server. Who and how guessed to put the dog icon in the mail address? And why a dog?
A long time ago, when (oh, horror!) There was no e-mail, no computers, not even electricity, all books were filled out by hand. No, then the dog badge was not written in the address, but it performed a completely noble function: it saved the time of clerks who painstakingly worked in the semi-darkness, half-bent position and holding the paper on their knees. Why in such an uncomfortable position remains a mystery. But if you imagine several hours in this position, and work with pen and ink, it becomes clear how much easier all kinds of ligatures made the work.
The dog icon is read in English as “At”, which is translated into Russian as “on, in, on”. This sign denoted belonging to something, was used in exchange accounts, and today more often indicate a specific place or event. In the Middle Ages, instead of "At", they used the preposition "Ad" - to, at, on, at, before. And the letter "d" was decorated with a long ponytail thrown to the left. The ligature @ was formed by the merger of the letters "a" and "d", and, by and large, the history of the creation of the dog icon is the history of medieval writing in Europe.
In Brazil, Spain and Portugal, a similar symbol denoted a measure of weight and volume equal to one arrobe. And although historians doubt that it was the same @, but the capital "A" with a curl, decorating jugs of wine or oil, really resembles an electronic "dog".
Before putting the dog icon, translate the keyboard into English. language. Then, while holding shift, press the number 2. If you are working in Word, open the insert - symbol - tab "characters", select "plain text - basic Latin". In Unicode, @ is denoted by the number 0040, and in Morse code by the character set: dot - dash - dash - dot - dash - dot.
Every European trader who lived during the Renaissance knew perfectly well how to write a dog badge in the most profitable way: a twisted elegant @ was located in front of the price of the goods, and was supposed to attract the attention of passers-by. Later, this ligature began to be used in accounting, for example: 12p @ 6$ - 12 pieces for 6 dollars.
The following fact is not directly related to the dog icon, but is so curious that it would be wrong not to mention it. In the 15th century, when post offices were not even dreamed of in your hometown, letters were delivered by foot or horse messengers. They announced their arrival to the population by blowing a horn similar to that used by merchants, itinerant artists, etc. From the end of the XVI - beginning of the XVII centuries. horns were forbidden to be used by anyone except postmen. Today, the image of crossed post horns can be seen on envelopes, stamps, postcards, etc. A simple tool has become a symbol of mail, recognizable all over the world. So, the dog icon in the address is very reminiscent of the outline of a horn, which is undoubtedly a curious coincidence. And how interesting it turned out: the symbol
"virtual" mail accidentally repeated the outlines of the real mail symbol!
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 language 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 indicated various characters(let's 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 the name "dog" took 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 amazing contemporary stories, associated with the @ symbol, originated 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.
What a pity that the time of paper letters and postcards has irrevocably passed. E-mail, by its principle of operation, practically repeats the regular mail system, borrowing both terms (letter, envelope, attachment, box, delivery, and others) and characteristic features. The electronic sign, once proposed by the American programmer Raymond Tomlinson for the format of an email address, has now become a central concept of Internet culture, and its image can even be seen on road signs.
Remember the time when almost every house kept several albums filled with precious memories associated with loved ones? From the photographs, already cracked and yellowed, they look: an important military man, in the form of a long-defunct regiment; an embarrassed young lady standing at the gate of a village house - now in its place is Moscow Avenue, where it is crowded with people and honking cars; your great-grandfather is a little boy who was specially dressed up in a suit and brought to the photographer ... All these people have never seen mobile phone. They did not use e-mail, but often managed to write and say much more kind words than we do now.
Together with photographs in albums and caskets - postcards and letters on lined paper: this was sent by my mother when she was on vacation in the Crimea, and that thick pink envelope with a Czech stamp was from Prague. How long was the answer, almost three weeks! In every small town the post office building was almost the center of the universe, people came here to send parcels and parcels, bandaged them, worried. Carefully write down the address on the form in neat handwriting. For a long time and with pleasure we chose the most unusual postcard in order to congratulate a friend ...
Now everyone can register a virtual Mailbox and send and receive letters, photos and postcards completely free of charge. It does not matter where the addressee is located, in Africa or in a neighboring house - the message will be delivered instantly.
First email was sent almost forty years ago. E-mail as a means of communication did not originate in 1971, as you can often read about it on websites and in most popular magazines, but somewhat earlier. According to one version, this happened in the summer of 1965, when Noel Morris and Tom van Vleck wrote the MAIL program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for operating system Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) installed on the computer.
Today, the @ sign is central to Internet culture and has a wider meaning than just a piece of a well-established client's email address that you hastily jotted down in your notebook. He went down in history, became something indispensable, replacing the famous horn.
Images of single or crossed post horns can be seen on many postage stamps and other collectibles from around the world. The "post horn", which has become the international symbol of mail, is a cylindrical brass or brass instrument with a mouthpiece. He used to serve to signal the arrival or departure of a foot or horse postman. In the 16th century, Thurn und Taxis, a European postal institution owned by members of a noble family, was given the privilege of using a post horn for its messengers carrying mail. In the 18th-19th centuries, in some countries, postmen used a post pipe. Over time, postal horns fell out of use, although, for example, in Germany, even before the Second World War, they were part of the equipment of postmen on horseback passenger mail.
Rice. E-mail sign on a road sign in Western Europe
In 1972, the American programmer Raymond Tomlinson from BBN wrote, within the TENEX operating system (later known as TOPS-20), for the DEC PDP-10 computer email programs: SNDMSG (send a message) and READMAIL (view mail) by extracting the appropriate implementation block from the CPYNET protocol. He conducted preliminary experiments with sending test messages in 1971. Thanks to the popularity of the ARPANET, and the fact that Tomlinson first introduced the now-famous @ sign into the email address format, many consider him the inventor of email.
It is believed that the history of the @ sign originates in the Middle Ages, when the monks rewrote treatises and translated manuscripts, including from Latin. Pretext ad, which in modern English means at(“on”, “in”, “to”) and indicates belonging, direction and approximation. In the script used by the monks, the letter "d" had a small "tail", which made it look like the number "6" in mirror image. Thus, ad has become a well-known sign in all of us.
In the 15th century, Spanish merchants used this sign as an abbreviation for the measure of weights - arroba(this is approximately 11.52 kg). This measure was used to indicate the weight of livestock and wine. During the Renaissance, the sign began to be used to indicate the price, and during the era of the industrial revolution, it became invariably found in accounting reports. Over time, the "dog" settled on most keyboards on the key with the number two.
But the famous character is not only used in network services to separate a username from a domain. So, in programming languages, this is also, for example, an annotation declaration (in Java), an array indicator (in Perl), escaping all characters in a string (in C#). In PHP, it is used to suppress the output of an error or warning.
Rice. Monument to the "electronic dog" in Chita
In our country, this sign was honored with several monuments. One of them was installed in 2006 in Chita. The monument is a cement slab measuring 1.5 by 1.5 meters, which was installed on the sidewalk instead of 9 boulevard ceramic slabs. The shape of the electronic "dog" was cut out of plastic. There is a sign on the stove, which says that this is the world's first monument to the "electronic dog". Another monument to this sign was opened in Troitsk near Moscow near the city administration building. It's called Friendship Without Borders.
Interestingly, for different peoples of the world, the @ symbol is typed on the computer in the same way, but it has completely different names and is pronounced differently - the theory of the "collective unconscious" does not work here at all. The designation of the e-mail symbol with the word "dog" is used exclusively by Russian Internet users. In other countries, it also goes by various animal-related names. Here are the names people have come up with for this symbol, which each of us uses on a daily basis.
In German, @, along with at And at-zeichen([at-tsaihen], "sign at"), has a colloquial name klammeraffe[klammeraffe], although this German word also has a figurative meaning, which is close in meaning to English leech("leech"). There are alternatives in some dialects: affenschwanz([affenschwanz] - "monkey tail"), affenohr([affenor] - "monkey ear") and affenschaukel([affenschauckel] - "monkey swing"). The Danes call this sign grisehale, i.e. "pig's tail". This symbol has the same name in Norwegian, although it is more often called there snabel- "elephant trunk". Similar name - snabel– and in Swedish, where the word was even recommended by the Swedish Language Board. True, in the Swedish language there is another name that is associated not with the animal world, but with food - Kanelbulle[kanelbule], that is, "cinnamon bun", because the layer of cinnamon in the bun is laid out in a spiral. One more thing - "elephant". The most commonly used name in Hebrew and Yiddish is strudel, after the name of the Viennese apple roll. Chekhov and Slovaks inspired zaviac[zavinach], popular in local bars, is a kind of fish roll. The Spaniards sometimes call the sign ensaimada[aynsaimaz] - a pastry that is usually prepared in Mallorca.
Rice. Koreans say the @ sign looks like a snail
In Finnish, there are two more names for this sign: kissanhanta([kisanhyantya] - "cat's tail") and the most wonderful name miukumauku([miuku-mauku] - “meow-meow”). In Hungarian, the @ symbol has a name kukac[crook], that is, "worm, larva." In Serbian, the sign is called majmun, similar naming in Bulgarian. The Spaniards and Portuguese call this symbol arroba- a word that arose from a unit of weight and volume, closely related to the amphora. If you translate the name of the @ sign from Thai, you get something like "wavy worm-shaped sign."
In France, where seafood is so popular, and oysters and snails are served in restaurants, it was hard not to notice the similarity of the sign with Escargot[escargot], although the officially accepted names are arobase or a commercial. In Italy, this is also a "snail", only Italian chiocciola[kyochiola]. The snail has also recently appeared in Hebrew ( shablul), Korean ( dalphaengi) and Esperanto ( heliko). In English, the name is preserved: it is either already familiar at, or a more complete name commercial at. The last name is the official name of this sign according to the international character table. Colloquial names in English whirlpool([whirlpool] - "whirlpool, jacuzzi") or fetch([fetch] - "ghost"), but they are rarely used. A couple of foreign names also penetrated into the English language: relatively rare, but still used snail, according to one version, this is a Danish name snabel. This is quite logical, since we all remember that the Old English language was also significantly influenced by the dialects of the Scandinavian tribes - the Danes and Norwegians, who made numerous raids from the end of the 8th century and created their settlements on the east coast. Despite all the names, the first place in terms of frequency in English is still at, which, most likely, will remain both the official and unofficial name of this sign.
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