In Turkey - a rose, in Israel - a strudel, in the USA - a cat, and in our common people - a “dog”. This is the nickname for the worldwide symbol of the electronic mailbox @, which has replaced the address, paper and pen in our everyday life.

Where did this funny squiggle with the letter “a” come from and why do we use it in our email addresses?

The origin of the symbol is shrouded in mystery and has given rise to dozens of theories. In 2000, Roman professor Giorgio Stabile put forward an interpretation of the origin of the “dog”, which refers to the letter of a 16th century merchant and the designation of the letter “a” with a curl 1 amphorae of sold wine.

American Berthold Ullman is confident that the “@” sign was invented by monks of medieval orders and meant Latin "ad"(designation: “on”, “in”, “in connection with”).
If we take Spanish and French, then the name of “dog” sounds like “arroba”, that is ancient measure of weight equal to 15 kilograms and is designated precisely by the “@” symbol.
The official name of the sign is “at” and takes its toll name from trade calculations. For example, 5 products @ (for) 2 UAH each. The symbol was used so often by merchants that it was decided to place it on typewriter keyboards, and from there it moved to our computers.

But “@” began to surf the Internet thanks to the inventor of soap, Ray Tomlinson. It was he who decided to assign the “dog” to the mail, since the sign could not be found in any other name or abbreviation. The first Internet mail address in history was: tomlinson@bbn-tenexa. Then the engineer had no idea how wildly popular the squiggle, which he chose as the main symbol, would gain.

So why do we still have a “dog”?

And here, too, there is no specific version. Some believe that the symbol really looks like a puppy curled up in a ball. The latter are confident that the English “at” repeated more than once vaguely resembles a dull dog barking. And still others prove that almost all the signs in the word “dog” are in one way or another similar to “@”. Although this theory raises significant doubts.

But the most popular version of the origin of our name for electronic soap is associated with one of the first antediluvian computer games called “Adventure”. Where one of the main characters is a funny dog, looking for treasure in a terrible labyrinth and denoted by the “@” symbol.

In fairness, it should be noted that our symbol, in addition to our favorite dog, was nicknamed a frog, a mullet, a snail and even a lamb.

In other countries, the fantasy ran even wilder. The Netherlands - a monkey's tail, Denmark - a trunk, China - a mouse, Serbia - crazy "A", and creative Slovakia - "rollmops", which means, believe it or not, a pickled herring. Just like that.

Now you know where one of the most used symbols in the world came from, so similar to a cozy little animal.

Instructions

Switch your computer to the English keyboard layout. To do this, press the key combination Alt left + Shift. You can also manually change the language. The panel in the lower right corner displays the current input language. Hover your cursor over it, left-click and select EN – English from the pop-up menu.

If not found English language in the menu, which means you need to install it. Click Start > Control Panel > Regional and Language Options. In the window that opens, select the Language and keyboard tab > Change > Add. Click on the “+” next to “English (USA).” Check the box next to "USA" (topmost line). Confirm your selection with the "OK" button.

Open the document in which you want to type the “dog” icon. After switching your keyboard to English, press and hold Left Shift while pressing the number 2 key. An "@" icon will appear in the desired location.

You can also type this icon from the symbol table. To open it, go to: Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Table. In the drop-down window on the panel, select the font in which you want to see the written icon. Click on the “@”, it should appear in the “To copy” window. Confirm your choice by clicking "Copy".

note

English is required for all keyboards, it’s just not always set as one of the input languages. No other layout (German, French, Polish, etc.) has a “dog” symbol.

Sources:

Education. How to put a dog sign and other symbols
how to recruit workers

Tip 2: How the @ symbol came to be and why we call it a dog

There are several versions of the origin of this word. The first and most banal one is that the icon actually looks like a ball curled up into a ball. Second, the sound of English at is a bit like the intermittent barking of a dog. According to another version, in the @ sign you can see all the letters that include “dog”. There is also a romantic version, according to which the name “doggy” migrated from the old computer game Adventure. The point of the quest was to travel through a computer-generated labyrinth, which was drawn with the symbols “+”, “-” and “!”, and the monsters opposing the player were designated by letters. Moreover, according to the plot of the game, the player had a faithful assistant - a dog, which, of course, was indicated by the @ icon. However, it is not possible to find out whether this was the root cause of the generally accepted name or whether the game appeared after the word “dog” had already become established.

With the advent of the Internet, the @ symbol, the so-called “dog,” became known to everyone. It is on every computer and smartphone. The most common use of this sign appears when writing email.

Few people know how the “dog” sign appeared, and that it was used several centuries before the Internet appeared. And certainly almost no one knows what this symbol is actually called correctly.

This dog in Russian is correctly called commercial “et”. The term comes from the English name - commercial at. But it is difficult to pronounce this long correct name of the sign. Therefore, colloquial symbols for @ have appeared in almost all languages. And all the names are somehow related to food or animals.

Belarusians call our dog the word “slimak”, which means “snail”. And indeed, there is a similarity between @ and a snail. Ukrainians also call it “snail” - “ravlik”. And also the Italians - “chiocciola”.

The Jews came up with a tasty name for the symbol. In Ivirit the word “strudel” means roll.

Some people think the @ sign looks like a monkey. For example, in Bulgarian they say “monkey A”, in German “klammeraffe”, and in Polish “małpa”. All this is translated as “monkey”.

The Turks call the dog "et", which in their language translates as "meat". The Greeks call it "papaki" - duck. And the Kazakhs are very surprised by their imagination with the name “aikulak”, which translates as “ear of the moon”.

Closest to historical significance the @ symbol are Spanish and French languages- arroba and arobase, respectively. These words denote a measure of weight.

How did the dog sign appear?

There are many hypotheses about the appearance and original meaning of the @ symbol. The most common is the origin of the word "aroba", which meant a measure of weight in some European languages in the Middle Ages. And in trade documents, aroba was written with a sign similar to our modern @.

Aroba was equal to 11.5 kg (12.5 kg in some regions). This word came to Europe from Arabic- "ar-rub", which means "quarter", that is, one-fourth of a hundred pounds.

There is another hypothesis about how the dog sign appeared. In the same Middle Ages, Italy used a similar symbol that showed volume. The @ sign denoted a volume equal to one amphora.

A similar symbol was found in Rus'. In the documents, the first letter of the alphabet “az” was beautifully painted so that it looked like @.

The modern commercial name "et" appeared in English economic documents. For example, the expression 3 widgets @ $7 each = $21 means 3 widgets costing $7 each, resulting in a total of $21.

And since the symbol was used in business, this inevitably led to the fact that it appeared on typewriters, and then on computer keys.

The very word “dog” for the @ symbol most likely came from the game Adventure, in which there was a dog character, denoted by the @ sign. And if you look closely, the sign really looks like a dog curled up in a ball.

The word "monkey" most likely came from owners of eight-bit zx-spectrum computers, some of which had a button that allowed programs to be copied to disk. This process usually corrupted the program, which is why it was called monkeying. Well, the button that started the process was indicated by the @ symbol.

As we know, in modern world"Dog" is most often found in email writing. For example [email protected] can be understood as username on example.com. The symbol separates the username and domain name.

And so on. things that you will find by looking through the “” section.

Today we have a “dog” icon on our turn, which, if we adhere to a scientific approach, is officially called “commercial at”, it looks something like this: @. Sound familiar? Well, a dog, an “incomprehensible badge”, “with a tail” and even a “monkey”. But mostly it’s “dog”. Why and where did this name come from? Many are perplexed, but still continue to say something like “Petrovinvest dog mail.ru” when dictating (for example, their Email on the phone). It doesn't always turn out well.

Moreover, at the other end of the line he will most likely be understood correctly, if he is not a foreigner or a Russian-speaking comrade who has been living in a foreign land for a long time. For the latter, “dog” (especially if this word is translated into the opponent’s language) causes stupor. The fact is that this designation took root only in RuNet, and in the bourgeoisie they don’t call the @ symbol, but not like us. By the way, the history of the appearance of this icon both on the keyboard and in email addresses is also interesting. Actually, this is what we will talk about in this post.

How to correctly pronounce the @ sign - dog, dog or...

So, in 99.9 percent of cases, our compatriots are forced to “distinguish themselves” in the process of verbal transmission to someone. Despite the dominance of instant messengers, regular email. mail is still the de facto main contact channel (at least the official one). Most often, emails are exchanged when there is a need to contact or receive some materials (photos, documents, etc.).

It’s good if you have the opportunity to write “your soap” to your opponent on a piece of paper or send it in an SMS message. The problem with the “dog” comes up precisely when it is necessary to transmit email by voice. It’s not a problem to convey Latin characters using names (by the first letters), but the @ icon not only confuses many, but also makes them wonder whether it would be correct to call it a “dog” (like a dirty word). And why exactly “sobakevich”?

So, first things first. Yes, calling the @ icon a dog is perfectly acceptable(at least on television and in the press they do not shy away from this jargon, although they can hardly serve as examples of correct behavior and expression of one’s thoughts). However, it would be better to still understand what is being said, and if yours doesn’t understand you, then quickly correct yourself and give another (officially correct, not slang) sound designation for the @ symbol.

Actually, it's pronounced "eth"(from English at). This sign is written as "commercial at". Why commercial? Well, because in itself English word at is a preposition that has several translation variations in the Russian language (meanings - the Russian language is great and powerful). For example, it can be the preposition "on", "by" or "in" (sometimes "about"), but in general it is usually indicates location.

By the way, this is why its symbolic designation (the @ icon) was chosen to display Email addresses. Look how everything falls into place..ru”, i.e.. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. We had a question - why “@” is called the commercial at. Here again everything is quite logical.

To abbreviate in English accounts (accounting documentation), several hundred years ago it became customary to write a single @ symbol instead of the word at. For example, like this: 7 articles @ 5 thousand rubles = 35 thousand rubles. If you decipher it, it will turn out: writing seven articles “at” 5 thousand rubles apiece will cost 35 thousand rubles. Thus, the question of why @ is called a commercial at can be considered over. Go ahead.

Because accounts (accounting) is a serious matter, then with the advent of the first serial typewriters, in addition to the usual letters and numbers, they began to add the “dog” sign (in their name). Well, because... Since personal computers largely inherited their layout from typewriters, the @ symbol has successfully migrated to the keyboards of PC users. So we followed it pretty clearly.

But why was “dog” (et) chosen as ? Well, it’s worth mentioning here that @ is used as a separator not only in email addresses, but also in . It is used to separate the login and password from the actual address of the page being accessed (see the link for details). But this format of URLs is rare, and for the vast majority of Internet users the stumbling block is located in the email address.

As I already (hurriedly) mentioned a little higher, adding the “at” sign as a separator was quite logical (based on the meaning of the word at and the use of its analogue in the form of the @ symbol in bourgeois accounting). Those. any email address can be easily pronounce as: petrov on gmai.com (and this will be in highest degree right and true).

Everything is clear and no questions arise with dogs. If you dive into history once again, the first to introduce this type of recording into use was a certain Tomlinson (a programmer, of course) back in the shaggy year of 1971. With the help of this record, the host (computer, server) on which this user had to be searched was also separated.

With a Russian-language keyboard layout, in order to insert the @ icon into the text, you will first need to switch to English using hotkeys (depending on the OS settings, this can be done with the key combination Shift+Alt or Shift+Control), or by clicking by the language selection icon in the tray (bottom right area of the screen). @ lives above the number 2, i.e. To insert it, you will need to hold Shift and press two (for those new to using PCs, I’ll chew).

So why is the @ symbol called a dog in RuNet?

Naturally, at that time in the vastness of the RuNet (which did not yet exist) no one knew about this. The initial computerization of the majority of the Russian-speaking mass of users began only in the 80s, and it was then that the jargon “dog” (dog) appeared to denote the sign separating the writing of an email address. Email mail in general was one of the first aspects that a novice PC and Internet user became acquainted with ().

There is no exact information about who or what prompted the viral spread of this meme (Internet jargon). There are several assumptions, and all of them are rightly based on the fact that in the 80s there was no graphics we were used to - neither in games nor in operating systems. Everything was test, or rather symbolic.

For example, in games, characters were displayed and locations were created using various icons. I still remember the flying shooter game that I spent money on in an online club during my childhood - everything there was drawn with arrows, sticks and stars. But what a thrill I felt from the game then! It is no longer possible to understand, repeat or explain this now (one can only remember it with longing).

So, there is several versions explaining the assignment of the name “dog” to the @ icon or “doggy” (probably ladies use this option more often). According to one of them, it was the action-adventure game that was popular at that time that served as the starting point for the viral spread of the meme (personally, I did not play it, or I completely forgot). In it, a dog traveled with the hero, which was either entirely or partially (its nose) displayed using the @ symbol. In this case, the association is quite understandable and explainable.

According to another version, the special spelling of the @ sign on some popular computers in RuNet at that time is to blame. This sign was drawn with a shortened tail and very much resembled a dog.

In addition, it was always displayed when loading, and once a name mentioned by someone could find support and begin to spread virally so much as to break through the gap of generations, completely losing its original meaning.

What's the result?

In general, there is only one conclusion - the @ symbol is called a dog for a reason that has long been unclear to us. This is just a rudiment - everyone talks and I talk. Is it worth continuing this bacchanalia? Why not. This makes Russian-speaking netizens even more mysterious in the eyes of foreigners.

Although they themselves do not lag behind and often instead of the English “et” they pronounce something like “snail” (indeed, the @ sign looks like a snail - certainly more than like a dog), “monkey”, “and with a tail” (trunk , curl), “duck”, “bun”, etc. (I would also add the statement “some crap” by Voronin Sr. from the series, because it also fits). People's imagination is limitless.

P.S. By the way, I want to correct myself. “Dog” (aka “et”) found registration not only in email addresses. We can say that it has successfully gained a foothold there too. After all, the @ icon is always placed before the user’s name, for example, when replying to his message.

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The history of the dog symbol and its name

There are several versions of the appearance of such an icon, some of which are very interesting. According to the hypothesis of the Italian professor Giorgio Stabile, who himself carried out the research and found medieval documents that mentioned containers of wine, the volume of which was measured in units designated by the letter “a” with a curl that resembled @. Most likely, such a symbol replaced the term anfora (amphora), which meant a vessel with two handles that had Greek origin and was widely used in the Middle Ages.

This is more or less clear. Now let's look at a couple of the most common versions that explain how @ icon got the nickname dog.

According to one of them, the history of the appearance of the “dog” dates back to the 80s of the last century, when computers were still practically in their infancy, and therefore there could be no talk of any graphics that were more or less reminiscent of modern ones. The monitors were text.

It was in those time immemorial there was one popular game, all objects in which were designated exclusively by symbols (respectively letters, “+”, “-” signs, etc.). So, one of the heroes of this adventure game was a dog who served as the gamer’s assistant, which was precisely indicated by the @ symbol.

According to another version, on the screens of some models of computers of that time, a symbol similar to the modern @ was displayed, but with a much shorter “tail,” which made it look exceptionally like a small dog.

Be that as it may, the word “dog” was uttered by someone (history, however, is silent about who exactly was the first to do it), it was picked up by others, which ultimately led to the emergence of a new slang unit in the Russian-language space of the global network.

What is the name of the dog icon in different countries?

As we already know, in the Russian-speaking environment the @ symbol received a “dog” nickname. And with what or with whom is it associated among other peoples? It is quite obvious that different people, regardless of nationality, represent this sign in different ways. However, as in the case of RuNet, each region has its own tradition. Here's what the @ icon is called in other countries:

in Hungary - tick;
in Belarus, Ukraine, Italy - snail;
in Bulgaria - monkey A;
in Germany, Poland - a monkey;
in Greece - duck;
in Israel - strudel (Austrian roll) or kruhit;
in Spain and France - arroba and arobase, respectively; these terms are derived from the name of the measure of weight;
in China and Taiwan - a mouse;
in the Netherlands - a monkey's tail;
in Turkey - meat;
in the Czech Republic - roll;
in Finland - cat's tail

How the dog icon appeared in email addresses

If we take the history of the development of the Internet as a basis, the dog icon in an email address was first used by the American programmer Ray Tomlinson, who, back in 1971, first sent such a message, where he separated the user name from the name of the computer using the @ symbol. Since then, this email syntax has become the norm.

Why was the dog icon used by Tomlinson as a separator in e-mail addresses? To answer this question, we need to delve a little into history again. As I already said, the term “dog” (or “dog”) is popular as slang only among Russian-speaking users. Officially, including according to encoding standards, including Unicode (we’ll talk about codes below), this sign reads as “commercial et” (from the English. "commercial at").

But let's figure out why the @ icon received such a commercial name. The fact is that the dog symbol began to be used in commerce several hundred years ago when compiling accounting accounts of this type:

14 products @ $3 each = $42

If translated into Russian, such an entry would mean the following:

The cost of 14 items at $3 each is equal to $42

Here, the symbol familiar to us replaces in meaning the English preposition “at”, which plays the role of the Russian-language analogue of “by”. I think it's now clear why the @ sign has a commercial name. To fully clarify the situation, it should also be noted that for “at” in the Russian language there are several meanings that describe the location of an object (at, on, in, at, behind, near). Now take a look at some examples of email addresses:

[email protected](short: dan_thompson at gmail..com) - for domain mail

Look, the first entry can be read as “user dan_thompson on the mail server whose domain name is gmail.. In accordance with the logic, everything now falls into place, at least it becomes clear why the dog character was chosen as a separator in email addresses , which plays its role to this day.

How to put a dog sign on a computer and laptop

Due to the popularity of the @ icon and its use in business for a long time, it soon appeared on the keys of typewriters, and some time after the appearance of the first computers, it took its rightful place on the computer keyboard.

Inexperienced users may quite reasonably wonder whether how to print a dog icon when working on a computer or laptop? This can be done in several ways. If you don’t know how, then the following information is just for you.

How to type the dog symbol on the keyboard

Using the desired keyboard shortcut is the main method for inserting a commercial at. Let's consider the most common case, which involves using a classic keyboard with a standard layout (the first six letter keys from the top row from left to right: QWERTY for Latin and YTSUKEN for Cyrillic).

As you can see, for a regular keyboard, the @ symbol is on the number key "2". To type it on a computer or laptop, you must first switch to the English keyboard layout. And after that press the key combination Shift + 2.

There is another option. You hold down a key Alt and on the additional digital panel on the right you type "064", then release Alt, after which the @ icon will appear:

These are not only the lightest, but also the most quick ways setting the dog when using a device (computer or laptop) running the Windows operating system, which is used by the vast majority. This could have ended there, if not for certain circumstances that may well turn out to be a stumbling block.

After all, it may happen that you have a non-standard keyboard, the required key does not work, or there is some other reason why you cannot use the methods described above. There are also solutions for these cases.

How to copy commercial fl and paste it in the right place

Let's say you can just copy this character from any document, or at least from this web page, where they are a dime a dozen (for example, one of the “dogs” is present in the title of the publication) using the context menu (move the cursor to the selected object and click on the right mouse button) or Ctrl +C:

Then go to the document or text field of the program where you need to type the character, and enter it using the same context menu (the “Insert” item) or the Ctrl + V keys (I remind you that all the mini-instructions in this article are given for Windows users).

This method, however, is extremely inconvenient, especially if you use a commercial fl insert quite often. Therefore, I mentioned it only for general reasons.

A much more practical and convenient option is also associated with copying, but in this case the helper is the symbol table (read about), which is included in Windows programs by default. This application will allow you to copy any special character, including the "doggie" (commercial at).

To fish out this sign, say, in Windows 10, there are several ways.

1. You need to click the menu button “Start” - “Windows Accessories” - “Character Table”:

2. Another way is to use the search. To do this, click on the magnifying glass icon in the bottom panel (screenshot above) and start typing “symbol table...” into the search field that appears, which will result in the application you are looking for appearing:

3. Open the command line using Win (Windows logo button) + R, enter the command "charmap" and click "OK":

Upon completion of one of the above actions, a sign with special characters will appear. In it you find and select a commercial et (the “Select” button), after which the sign will appear in the “For copying” field, then click “Copy”:

Further actions are clear. After you copy @ to the clipboard in this way, open required document or the text area of the program and paste this symbol there (using the context menu or the combination Ctrl + V).

To keep a table with special characters always at hand, you can pin its shortcut to the bottom taskbar. To do this, find this application in the list of programs (fourth screenshot up from here), right-click on the icon and select the appropriate option from the menu:

Inserting @ into the HTML code of a document (web page)

All we have to do is turn Special attention on how to write a dog icon when generating the HTML code (?) of a document located on the Internet (for example, a page of any website).

In general, in the hypertext markup format, special characters (which include @) are written by encoding according to the relevant international standards.

This is important in cases where there is no key with the desired symbol or it is necessary to ensure its correct display in all web browsers without exception, which is not always achievable with normal pasting (using copy options or from the keyboard).

In Unicode, for example, the dog icon is represented by the number U+0040, and to display it correctly on a web page in HTML code, you can use entries in the decimal number system ( @ ), and in hexadecimal ( @ ).

Where else is the dog sign used?

So, we have determined that commercial at is most often used in email addresses. But this is not the only area of application of this symbol. Let me list some more areas where it is used:

in data transfer protocols, the most famous of which are and;
in the application protocol IRC (created for group communication), which is used to facilitate the exchange of messages online;
in programming languages (C#, Pascal, Java, Python, Ruby, Perl, PHP, FoxPro, XPath, Transact-SQL and many others), as well as in ;
in , where the dog icon is placed before the username;
in some role-playing computer games to indicate the player's current state.

I have listed those areas that are directly related to the Internet space. But there are also areas in which commercial et also plays a role, namely: in some languages for specialized notations, in the independent youth organization AIESEC (it is its symbol in internal correspondence), in chemistry, etc.