Main points
- The @ symbol appeared in the Middle Ages as an abbreviation for the Latin preposition “ad” and was used in commercial records to indicate the price per unit of a good.
- In 1971, engineer Ray Tomlinson chose the @ symbol to separate the username and computer name in email addresses, giving it new meaning in the digital age.
Who invented the @ sign and how it was used 400 years before the Internet / Unsplash
Most modern users think of the @ symbol as something entirely modern, either as part of an email address or as a tagging tool on social media. However, this graphic symbol has a much older history, dating back to a time before digital technology was even dreamed of.
What was the first purpose of the @ symbol?
Although today this symbol is associated with high technology, it appeared long before the invention of the first computer. Even on the keyboards of 19th-century typewriters, you could find a separate key with this sign, located next to the letters and other symbols. The documented use of this sign dates back to 1536, but there are suggestions that it could have appeared even in the 6th or 7th centuries AD, writes IFLScience.
One of the main versions of the origin of the symbol is the work of medieval scribes. Latin scribes, who manually copied huge volumes of texts, were constantly looking for ways to speed up their work with the help of abbreviations. This is how the symbol & (ampersand) appeared, and the @ sign evolved in a similar way. It became a shorthand substitute for the Latin preposition “ad”, meaning “on”, “to” or “towards”. Visually, it looked like the letter “a”, the tail of which smoothly turned into a loop, absorbing the letter “d”.
There are also more mysterious references to this symbol. For example, in a Bulgarian translation of a Greek chronicle from 1345, the @ sign unexpectedly appears in place of the first letter in the word “Amen”, writes the BBC. The reasons for this isolated use remain a mystery to historians, since this technique was not repeated in subsequent texts of the time.
Another theory links the origin of the symbol to French scribes, who used it as a decorative variant of the spelling “à,” which also means “at.” This meaning resonates uncannily with how we use the symbol in internet culture today, although there is little direct evidence for this theory.
A real historical breakthrough in the study of this issue came in 2000 thanks to Professor Giorgio Stabile of the University of Rome La Sapienza. He discovered the @ symbol in a letter from a Florentine merchant dated May 4, 1536. In this document, the sign was used to indicate the price per unit of goods – for example, a certain amount of olive oil for a specific amount of money. This commercial tradition survived into the 19th century, when accountants and shopkeepers actively entered @ into their ledgers using typewriters precisely to indicate the cost of goods.
A second life for @
The symbol was given a new lease of life in 1971 by computer engineer Ray Tomlinson. While working on the first ARPANET messaging program, he was looking for a way to separate the username from the computer name in an address. Tomlinson needed a symbol that would be clearly recognized by the operating system, would be unambiguous, and would not be used in common language or programming code.
In a 2012 interview with Smithsonian Magazine, he recalled that the choice was small—an exclamation point, a comma, or an equal sign could have been used, but they didn’t seem logical. The @ sign was perfect for this role, as it already meant “at” or “in.” This decision effectively saved the ancient symbol from oblivion, transforming it into one of the main visual markers of our era.
Everyone calls it their own way.
Interestingly, in different parts of the world this sign has received very colorful names that reflect local culture:
- In Africa it is called “aapstert”, which means “monkey tail”.
- The Danes use the names “snabel-a” – “elephant trunk” or “grisehale” – “pig's tail”.
- The French affectionately call it “escargot” or “petit escargot”, which means “snail” or “little snail”.
- In Hebrew, the symbol was named after the popular dessert – “strudel”.