You use it every single day. You probably typed it three times before breakfast while tagging someone on Instagram or firing off a Slack message to your boss. But if I asked you for the official name of the at symbol, you’d likely just blink and say, "Uh, the at sign?"
That’s fine. It works. But it's also kinda like calling a dog a "four-legged barker." It describes the thing, but it isn't the name.
The truth is, the name of the at symbol is a linguistic mess that spans centuries, continents, and weirdly enough, jars of olives. Ray Tomlinson didn't just pluck it out of thin air in 1971 to invent email; he rescued a character that was gathering dust on the sidelines of history.
It actually has a real name (sorta)
If you want to be a pedant at your next trivia night, the most "official" technical name used by programmers and typographers is asperand. Or, if you’re looking at the Unicode Standard, it’s simply "Commercial At."
But nobody says "asperand." It sounds like a prescription allergy medication.
The symbol @ is a ligature. In the world of paleography—the study of ancient writing—a ligature is what happens when two letters have a baby. Most historians agree it’s a mashup of the Latin word ad, meaning "to," "at," or "toward." Monks in the Middle Ages were obsessed with efficiency because vellum was expensive and their hands cramped up from copying Bibles all day. They started looping the "d" around the "a" to save a fraction of a second.
Fast forward a few hundred years. Merchants took that monk-shorthand and turned it into a logistical powerhouse.
The Spanish Connection: It’s an Arroba
Go to Madrid or Mexico City and ask for the name of the at symbol. They won't say "at." They’ll say arroba.
This isn't just a quirky translation. The arroba was a unit of weight—roughly 25 pounds or 11.5 kilograms. If you were a Spanish merchant in the 1500s shipping wine or oil, you’d write "@1" to mean "one arroba." We actually have proof of this. Italian researcher Giorgio Stabile found a letter from 1536 written by a Florentine merchant named Francesco Lapi. In the letter, Lapi used the @ symbol to describe the price of a "vessel of wine."
It’s wild to think that the backbone of our digital identity—your Twitter handle, your email address—is essentially a 500-year-old measurement for a jug of vino.
Why Ray Tomlinson changed everything
Before 1971, the @ key was just a lonely button on a Model 33 Teletype machine. It was used by accountants. It meant "at the rate of." If you bought 10 apples @ 5 cents each, that was its entire universe.
Then came Ray Tomlinson.
He was working at BBN Technologies, trying to figure out how to send a message from one computer to another over ARPANET. He needed a separator. He needed a character that wouldn't show up in anyone's name so the computer wouldn't get confused.
He looked down at his keyboard.
The comma was taken. The period was taken. The brackets were being used for code. But there sat the @, looking back at him. It was perfect. It literally meant "at." User "at" Host. It was so logical it feels inevitable in hindsight.
"I looked at the keyboard, and I thought: 'What can I use that won't be confused with a username?'" Tomlinson later said. He chose it in a few seconds. Those few seconds redefined the name of the at symbol for the rest of human history. He saved it from being a ghost of the accounting world.
The weirdest names from around the world
English speakers are boring. We just call it "at." The rest of the world looked at that little swirl and saw a whole zoo of animals. This is where the name of the at symbol gets genuinely hilarious.
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- The Snail: In France, it’s petit escargot. In Italy, it’s chiocciolina. In Hebrew, it's shablul. Everyone looks at that spiral and thinks of a gastropod.
- The Monkey Tail: This is huge in Europe. The Dutch call it apenstaartje. The Germans sometimes go with Klammeraffe (spider monkey). Even the Serbians call it majmun.
- The Elephant Trunk: The Danes aren't seeing monkeys. They see an snabel-a. An "A with a trunk."
- The Worm: Over in Hungary, it’s kukac.
- The Moon Ear: This one is poetic. In Kazakhstan, it’s sometimes referred to as "the moon's ear."
Honestly, "monkey tail" is a way better name than "commercial at." We missed an opportunity there.
The Great Typographical Debate
Is it a "symbol" or a "sign"?
Strictly speaking, it’s a grapheme. But if you want to get into the weeds of typography, the name of the at symbol is often categorized alongside the ampersand (&). Both are survivors. They are characters that represent entire words.
There’s a common myth that the @ symbol is a recent invention. People think it was created for computers. That is objectively false. It was on the keyboard of the Lambert typewriter in 1902. It was a standard feature on the Underwood. It’s been waiting for its moment in the spotlight for over a century.
Why the "At" is actually a security feature now
In the early days of the web, you could just write your email address on a webpage. Then the harvesters came.
Spambots would crawl the web looking for the name of the at symbol because it was a beacon for a valid email address. This led to that weird era of the internet where people would write their email as "name [at] gmail [dot] com."
We’ve moved past that mostly, thanks to better filters, but it shows how powerful that one little glyph is. It’s a target. It’s a separator. It’s a tag.
How to use it correctly (and stop being annoying)
The name of the at symbol carries weight in how we communicate. In the 2020s, the "at" has become a verb. "Don't @ me."
When you "at" someone, you are calling them into a digital space. You are creating a notification. This has changed the social contract of the internet. Using the symbol in a group chat is a way of saying, "I am talking specifically to you, but I want everyone else to watch."
Stop the Overuse
Don't be the person who uses the @ symbol in every single line of a group thread. It's the digital equivalent of poking someone in the shoulder repeatedly while you're both standing in a circle of friends.
The Professional Standard
In professional emails, the @ still holds its original merchant meaning in some niches. If you’re in construction or logistics, using "5 units @ $500" is still standard shorthand. Don't feel like you have to write out "at the rate of" just to look formal. The symbol was literally built for this.
What happens next?
The name of the at symbol is secure. It isn't going anywhere. While other symbols like the tilde (~) or the pipe (|) struggle to find mainstream relevance outside of coding, the @ is the king of the keyboard.
If you’re building a brand or setting up a new social handle, remember that the @ is a bridge. It connects the person to the place.
Actionable Next Steps:
- Check your handles: If you are using different names across platforms, try to unify them so your "at" name is consistent. It’s better for "SEO of you."
- Use it for productivity: In apps like Notion, Google Docs, or Obsidian, typing the @ symbol is often a shortcut to link to other pages or people. It’s no longer just for email; it’s a "search and link" trigger.
- Respect the "Don't @ me": Understand the cultural nuance. Sometimes, people want to shout into the void without a notification hitting their phone. If someone says "Don't @ me," they are setting a boundary. Respect it.
- Appreciate the history: Next time you see an @, don't just see a digital tag. See a medieval monk, a 16th-century wine merchant, and a 1970s engineer all shaking hands across time.
The name of the at symbol might be officially "commercial at," but its soul is much older and much more interesting than a piece of office stationery. It’s the character that survived the transition from parchment to pixels, and it’ll likely outlive whatever device you’re reading this on.