On the Internet, the well-known symbol "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 as a signal of the common human communication space and one of the most popular signs in the world.
One of the evidences of the worldwide recognition of this designation is the fact that in 2004 (in February) the International Telecommunication Union introduced a special code for the designation @ into the common Morse code. It combines the codes of two Latin letters: C and A, which displays their joint graphic spelling.
History of the symbol "dog"
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. This important evidence wasletter from a merchant from Florence, which is subsidized as far back 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 from ancient times the universal measure of volume was called.
Berthold Ullmann'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 an old Spanish measure of weight (about 15 kg), abbreviated in writing as @.
Modernity
Many people wonder what the symbol "dog" is called. Note that the official modern name for this symbol is "commercial at" and originates from accounts in which it was used in the following context: 7widgets@$2each=$14. This can be translated as 7 pieces of 2 dollars=14 dollars
Because 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 the history of mankind "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 his 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. First of all, the badge 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"to".
However, the following legend can be called the most romantic. 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.
The meaning of it was to travel through the labyrinth created by the 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 answer 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 "maymunsko 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 askabout 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 make 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.
Finland (cat's tail), America (cat), Taiwan and China (mouse) play cat and 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 letterThe "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 meet a "doggy"?
There are a number of services that use this symbol (except email):
HTTP, FTP, Jabber, Active Directory. In IRC, a character is placed before the channel operator's name, for example, @oper.
The sign is also 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 sign in Ruby.
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 Batch Files, thanks to the character, echo suppression is suppressed for the executable command. Designating an action as echo off mode is usually applied before entering the mode to prevent a specific command from being displayed on the screen (forvisibility: @echo off).
So we looked at how many aspects of virtual and real life depend on a regular 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 you will receive a letter with a "dog" today, and it will bring only good news.
