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by DwarfClown on August 21st, 2008
This sign originated as a scribe's quick way of writing the Latin word ad, especially in lists of prices of commodities. It is usually known as 'the at sign' or 'the at symbol', which is good enough for most people. It is sometimes called 'commercial a', and occasionally by the French name arrobe or arroba. It has acquired various nicknames in other languages, but none has so far caught on in English.
In Spanish, I call it "arroba".
by EL1 2 on August 21st, 2008
In typography, it's called the "commerical at". This is interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/@#.22Commercial_at.22_in_other_languages
by Andy Is Wicked Married to Penal Colony on August 21st, 2008
I have always seen it called "commercial at".
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign
The typographic character @, the at sign, denotes a pan-lingual abbreviation of the word 'at'. It evolved from the phrase "at the rate of" in accounting and commercial invoices, e.g. “7 widgets @ $2 ea. = $14”. Nowadays, this commercial character is ubiquitous because of its use in e-mail addresses. In English, it is informally pronounced as at, and can be referred to as the at sign or the at symbol. Its official, typographic character nomenclature is commercial at in the ANSI/CCITT/Unicode character encoding standards. Some historical names are mentioned in the "History" section below.
by Barcaluv on August 21st, 2008
Not sure about it in English.
In Spanish we also call it the "Arroba" symbol which is a weight measure equivalent to 25 pounds.
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