Corpora: the At sign

[Gabriel Pereira Lopes]

In Portugal we call it "arroba" or "at" sign.

Gabriel Pereira Lopes

Jean Veronis wrote:

> 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 "perluète").
>
> 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/