At 17:12 11/10/2001 +0200, you wrote:
>Dear All
>I have a slightly unusual request: what do the speakers of various languages
>call the at sign (@), as in the email addresses?
In French, it is called "arobas" or "arrobas" - etymology unclear. Probably
from "a rond bas de casse" (round a lower case). Nothing to do with the
Spanish unit of measure with the same name.
It is also sometimes called "a commercial" by analogy with the "e
commercial" (& or "perlučte").
Some people have also proposed "escargot" (i.e. snail), but it never
worked. I suppose that the French do not accept to confuse food and
computers :-)
By the way, the character itself is a ligature of a + d in the latin word "ad".
--what about names for "&" ?
Jean Véronis
http://www.up.univ-mrs.fr/~veronis/
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