The ‘@’ symbol’s lack of a suitably inspiring English name has generated some interest from Shady Characters readers. Not for us ‘spider monkey’, ‘rollmop herring’ or ‘rose’; instead, we’re stuck with ‘commercial at’, or even plain old ‘at’. Joseph Chow (@josephch) suggests ‘atra’ to rectify the situation, writing that:
Before its ascent to accidental stardom, the ‘@’ went almost unremarked for centuries. Widely used to mean ‘at the rate of’1 — for example, ‘3 apples @ $1’ is equivalent to ‘3 apples at $1 each’ — the symbol lived out a useful but mundane existence in the world of commerce, rarely warranting a second glance from paleographers or philologists. Even now, when it has been propelled firmly into the limelight by email’s meteoric rise, credible accounts of the symbol’s visual appearance and meaning remain surprisingly thin on the ground.