Why is the sign called a dog in email. Symbol "dog": history of appearance, meaning and correct name. Email Icon Mile
It is impossible to write an e-mail message without such an unusual sign as @. Everyone knows him by the funny name "dog" and he is on the same key as button 2.
Where did the "dog" icon come from?
Most people think that the @ sign was invented by programmers. But this is far from true. A similar symbol was used long before the very concept of electronic communications. It is believed that similar signs in writing were used by monks in the Middle Ages.
The dog sign on the keyboard appeared thanks to Tomlinson, who is better known as the creator of Email. A character was required that would not occur in any name and would not confuse when writing email addresses. Today, this sign has become so popular that it was even introduced into Morse code.
This sign called "dog" is more known in post-Soviet countries. In the west, completely different names correspond to it. For example, in Italy it is “snail”, in Norway it is “elephant”, in America it is “cat”, in Germany it is “monkey”, in the Czech Republic it is “marinated herring”, in Serbia it is “crooked A”. The inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun approached this issue in the most original way. They called @ "whirlpool".
Interesting! According to one version, the name "dog" was assigned to the character on the keyboard due to the fact that @, resembles this animal curled up in a ball. Although there are more interesting options.
How to write the @ sign?
This symbol is visible at a glance. But beginners often wonder: how to write a dog on a computer keyboard, since nothing happens when you press it. The trick is that this character is only available with the English keyboard layout.
Therefore, to write @, you need to:
- In order to understand how to make a dog on the keyboard, you first need to change the input language. To do this, on the "Taskbar", in the lower right corner, we find a sign that the Russian layout is enabled. It will be the character "RU".
- Click on this letter. A mini-list will appear, where you must select "EN".
- Click on these letters.
- After that, to press the dog on the keyboard, you will need to use the key combination Shift and 2. The first is located at the bottom left, the second at the top.
All manipulations are very simple. The disadvantage is that if the user types in Russian, they will constantly have to change the input language, which is not very convenient.
Hello site readers! Many people know the catchphrase “ What kind of dog is this?” from the movie “Ivan Vasilyevich is changing his profession”.
Today we will talk about another "dog" - a computer symbol " @ ”, with which all Internet users are familiar with addresses.
And indeed, it’s terribly interesting - where did such an unusual icon come from, why is it needed, why is it so interesting and even funny named?
Often the origin of common things is obscured due to long periods time and lack of surviving evidence and documents.
With regard to the computer dog, everything is quite well known and reliably proven.
- Symbol in the form of an outlined incomplete circle capital letter“a” has been used for a long time and is still used in the field of international commerce.
- The @ sign is an abbreviation for the English phrase “ at the rate of” in payment documents with the value “ price per piece”.
- In a general accounting sense, the English “ at” can be translated as “ in an account like this”.
For some reason, the creators of the Internet decided to use accounting terminology when registering users in various services. This, in general, is quite logical, registration is the entry in the Book of Accounts.
So it is also logical that in the fall of 1971, one of the inventors of e-mail, Ray Samuel Tomlinson, came up with the idea of using the “@” sign to indicate the mail domain in an e-mail address.
Useful for travelers and backpackers. AT European countries A road sign with an “@” symbol indicates public Internet access points.
Why is the @ symbol called a dog?
There are several legends why @ was called a dog. The following three versions look the most reliable.
- The figure above shows the logo of one of the progenitors of modern world wide web- Fidonet. As you can see, the nose of a sketchy pet is just indicated by the at symbol in a circle.
- Another version looks even more plausible. At a time when the graphical interface had not yet been invented, a computer game called Adventure was popular. One of the characters was a scout dog, indicated in the playing field with the @ sign.
- The third version looks far-fetched, but still has a distribution. On one of the first Soviet personal computers DVK, this symbol served as a splash screen when turned on. Allegedly, users saw a dog curled up in this squiggle. However, for such an interpretation it is necessary to have a fairly developed imagination.
How to pronounce dog icon in English and other languages
In Russian, there is a practice to call the symbol “@” “dog” or “dog”. The email address will be voiced by the following phrase.
- “Username Dog Mail (Gmail, Yandex) Tochka Ru (or Kom)”.
- In economics and commerce, accounting, the ligature @ is pronounced and described traditionally as “commercial Et” or “commercial at”.
It is noteworthy that American engineers, who proved themselves to be real masters in inventing various creative nicknames to denote technical terms, this time behaved surprisingly passive and indifferent.
In Anglo-Saxon computer terminology, “dog” is called “commercial ET”, without any reference to funny pets.
Pronounced @ in English, too, without any frills.
- [email protected]
- “Username E-mail dot ru”
It remains to be concluded that this time American national pragmatism worked. Our overseas partners decided that commercial at quite adequately reflects the meaning of the symbol.
- “Account such and such, From the mail domain such and such.”
In some countries of the world, @ also has cool nicknames, like ours.
- "Dog" - in the countries of the former USSR.
- "Monkey" - in Bulgarian, German, Polish.
- "Snail" - in Ukrainian, Italian.
In countries where the ligature @ was known long before the advent of computers, the former pronunciation of “at” or “commercial at” remained. This includes France, Spain and the UK.
How to type the @ symbol on the keyboard
There is no one-size-fits-all answer here. The problem is that there are many types of keyboards and varieties of character layouts.
The picture above shows a classic keyboard with “large keys” and a traditional layout. qwerty in Latin or YZUKEN in Cyrillic.
To enter @ on such a keyboard, you must switch to the Latin font mode and simultaneously press the key Shift and number " 2 ”.
What should I do if there is no “dog” symbol on the keyboard?
In this case, there may be options.
- Switch to symbolic keyboard. Switching can be done with the Alt keys, an asterisk “*”, or a special switch Smbl.
- On the mobile devices ah, smartphones and tablets, there is just a huge number of different keyboards. Some are specially designed for messengers and on such keyboards the dog symbol is implemented, for convenience and speed of typing addresses, as a separate key on the main layout.
- On most touch keyboards for mobile devices, the “@” sign is inserted in the same way as on external keyboards for desktop computers and laptops.
What should I do if the @ symbol can't be found on my existing keyboard?
It happens. Then you should refer to the "Symbol Table", access to which is in the list " Standard programs»OS Windows.
Illogically, the “dog” can be inserted through the “Insert” menu - “Symbols” in a text editor.
Email Icon Mile
The symbol "dog" is included in the officially registered trademark and brand logo.
I must say, a very successful and profitable acquisition from the point of view of marketing.
- First, the @ sign is quite organically associated with the email service.
- Secondly, the symbol is known to everyone, is popular, so its use as a designation for various products and services of the Mail.ru holding always attracts attention and increases the number of customers. This means that business profits are also growing.
All Mail.ru products are marked with a doggie icon.
- Email service.
- Messenger Mail.ru Agent.
- Amigo browser with Mail.ru search (capital “a” without a circle).
It is simply amazing how many interesting and even unusual things are hidden behind the usual “computer dog”.
Why is this @ symbol called a dog?
The history of the “dog” goes back to 1971, when programmer Ray Tomlinson was working on a program for exchanging electronic messages and using the “@” symbol, which is not found in English names and surnames, to be able to forward letters from one computer to another.
By March 1972, Ray Tomlinson had upgraded his email program for use on the ARPANET, the predecessor to the current network.
Internet. It was at this time that the @ symbol began to be used in email addresses - “at commercial” or colloquially “dog”, “doggy”.
And the thing is that on the “model 33” teletype machine, which was at the disposal of Ray Tomlinson, this key was used for punctuation and designation of the English preposition at (on).
Thus, an email address of the form<имя_пользователя>@<имя_домена>means nothing more than “a user with such and such a name on such and such a domain”
The exact origin of the symbol is not known, but according to one hypothesis, this is an abbreviation for the Latin ad.
The name "commercial at" takes its origin from the accounts. Since the symbol was used in business, it was placed on the keyboards of typewriters, from where it migrated to the computer.
In Spanish, Portuguese and French the name of the symbol comes from the word "arroba" - an old Spanish measure of weight, which was denoted by the @ sign when writing.
In the USSR, this sign was unknown before the advent of the computer, and got its name with the spread computer game, where, according to the scenario, the symbol “@” ran across the screen and denoted a dog. In addition, translated from the Tatar "et" means - "dog".
AT different countries the character is read differently.
Here are some examples:
In the USA - at ("the at sign".)
In Bulgaria, klomba or maimunsko a ("monkey A").
In the Netherlands - apenstaartje ("monkey's tail").
In Italy they say "chiocciola" - a snail.
In Denmark and Norway they use "snabel-a" - "snout a".
In Taiwan, a mouse. In Finland, the cat's tail.
In Greece - "little pasta".
In Hungary - a worm, a tick.
In Serbia - "crazy A".
In Sweden, an elephant.
In Vietnam - "twisted A".
In Ukraine - dog, doggie, tsutsenyatko (Ukrainian - puppy)
The "@" symbol has many uses these days.
In addition to e-mail and other Internet services, the symbol is used in many programming languages. In 2004, for the convenience of transferring email addresses, the International Telecommunication Union introduced a Morse code code for the symbol @ ( - - - )."
The origin of this symbol is unknown.
The traditional hypothesis is a medieval abbreviation of the Latin preposition ad (means "to", "on", "up to", "y", "at").
In 2000, Giorgio Stabile, a Sapienza professor, put forward a different hypothesis.
A letter written by a Florentine merchant in 1536 mentioned the price of one "A" of wine, with the "A" adorned with a scroll and looking like "@";
according to the Stabil, it was an abbreviation for the unit of measurement of volume, the standard amphora.
In Spanish, Portuguese, French, the @ symbol traditionally means arroba - an old Spanish measure of weight equal to 11.502 kg (in Aragon 12.5 kg); the word itself comes from the Arabic "ar-rub", which means "a quarter" (a quarter of a hundred pounds).
In 2009, the Spanish historian Jorge Romance discovered the abbreviation of arroba with @ in an Aragonese manuscript of the Taula de Ariza written in 1448, almost a century before the Florentine script studied by Stabile.
Signs similar to @ are found in Russian books of the 16th-17th centuries - in particular, on the title page of the Sudebnik of Ivan the Terrible (1550). Usually this is the letter “az” decorated with a curl, denoting a unit in the Cyrillic number system, in the case of Sudebnik, the first point.
The name "commercial at" comes from English bills, for example, 7 widgets @ $2 each = $14, which translates as "7 items of $2 each = $14" (English at = "by"). Since this symbol was used in business, it was placed on the keyboards of typewriters and from there migrated to the computer.
In the USSR, this sign was unknown before the advent of the computer.
One version of the origin of the name “dog”: on alphanumeric personal computer monitors of the DVK series (1980s), the “tail” of the image of this symbol drawn on the screen was very short, which made it look like a schematically drawn dog.
The @ symbol was displayed each time the DVK computer was turned on, after which the user had to select a bootloader.
Other, now practically not used in Russian, naming options for this sign: monkey, monkey, krakazyamba, masyamba, ear, bun, podyuza (on some keyboards, the ES computer was located at the bottom of the "Y" key).
Today we have the "dog" icon, which, if we stick to a scientific approach, is officially called "commercial at", it looks something like this: @. Familiar? Well, a dog, an “incomprehensible icon”, “but with a tail” and even a “monkey”. But mostly it's the dog. Why and where did this name come from? Many are perplexed, but still continue to say something like “Petrovinvest dog mail.ru” when dictating (for example, their Email on the phone). It doesn't always sound good.
Moreover, on the other end of the wire, he will most likely be understood correctly if he is not a foreigner or a Russian-speaking comrade who has long been living in a foreign land. For the latter, “dog” (especially if this word is translated into the language of the opponent) causes a stupor. The fact is that this designation took root only in Runet, and in bourgeois the @ symbol as soon as they don’t call it, but not like us. Curious, by the way, is the history of the appearance of this icon both on the keyboard and in Email addresses. Actually, this is what this post is about.
How to pronounce the @ sign correctly - dog, doggy or ...
So, in 99.9 percent of cases, our compatriots are forced to "stand out" in the process of oral transmission to someone. Despite the dominance of instant messengers, the usual email. mail is still the de facto main contact channel (in any case, the official one). Most often, it is Emails that are exchanged if necessary to contact or receive some materials (pictures, documents, etc.).
Well, if it is possible to write to the opponent "your soap" on a piece of paper or send it in an SMS message. The problem with the “dog” comes out precisely when it is necessary to transmit Email by voice. It’s not a problem to convey Latin characters using names (by first letters), but the @ sign not only confuses many, but makes you wonder if it would be correct to call it a “dog” (like a dirty word). And why actually "sobakevich"?
So, first things first. Yes, calling the @ icon a dog is perfectly acceptable(in any case, this jargon is not shy on television and in the press, although they can hardly serve as examples of correct behavior and expression of one's thoughts). However, it would be better to understand what is at stake, and if yours does not understand you, then quickly correct yourself and issue another (officially correct, not jargon) sound designation of the @ symbol.
Actually, it's pronounced like "et"(from English at). This sign is written as "commercial at". Why commercial? Well, because on its own English word at is a preposition that has several translation variations in Russian (meanings - the Russian language is great and mighty). For example, it can be the preposition "on", "by" or "in" (sometimes "around"), but in general it is usually indicates the location.
By the way, that is why its symbolic designation (the @ sign) was chosen to display Email addresses. See how everything falls into place..ru”, i.e. But I ran ahead a bit. We had a question - why "@" is called the commercial at. Here again, everything is quite logical.
For abbreviations in English accounts (accounting documentation), several hundred years ago, it became customary to write a single @ sign instead of the word at. For example, like this: 7 articles @ 5 thousand rubles = 35 thousand rubles. If you decipher it, it will turn out: writing seven articles "for" 5 thousand rubles apiece will cost 35 thousand rubles. Thus, the question of why @ is called the commercial at can be considered finished. Move on.
Because accounts (accounting) is a serious matter, then with the advent of the first serial typewriters they began to add, in addition to ordinary letters and numbers, the sign "dogs" (in their language). Well, since personal computers largely inherited their layout from typewriters, then the @ symbol successfully migrated to the keyboards of PC users. So we followed pretty clearly.
But why exactly "dog" (et) was chosen as? Well, it's worth mentioning here that @ is used as a separator not only in email addresses, but also in . Using it, they separate the login with a password from, in fact, the address of the page that is being accessed (for details, see the link). But this format of Urls is rare, and for the vast majority of Internet users the stumbling block is in the email address.
As I already (hurriedly) mentioned a little higher, the addition of the “et” sign as a separator was quite logical (based on the meaning of the word at and the use of its analogue in the form of the @ symbol in bourgeois accounting). Those. any email address can be easily pronounce like: petrov on gmai.com (and this would be eminently correct and true).
Everything is clear and there are no questions with dogs. If you once again plunge into history, then a certain Tomlinson (a programmer, of course) was the first to introduce this type of recording into use already in shaggy 1971. With the help of this entry, the host (computer, server) was also separated, on which this very user had to be searched.
With a Russian-language keyboard layout, in order to insert the @ sign into the text, you will first need to switch to English language using hotkeys (depending on the OS settings, this can be done by pressing Shift + Alt or Shift + Control), or by clicking on the language selection icon in the tray (right lower region screen). @ lives above the number 2, i.e. to insert it, you will need to hold down Shift and press the deuce (for beginners in using a PC, I chew it).
So why is the @ symbol called a dog in RuNet?
Naturally, at that time, in the vastness of the Runet (which did not yet exist), no one knew about this. The initial computerization of the majority of the Russian-speaking mass of users began only in the 80s, and it was then that the jargon “dog” (dog) appeared to denote the sign separating the spelling of the Email address. Email mail in general was one of the first aspects that a novice PC and Internet user got acquainted with ().
There is no exact information about who or what triggered the viral spread of this meme (Internet jargon). There are several assumptions, and all of them are rightly based on the fact that in the 80s there were no graphics familiar to us - neither in games, nor in operating systems. Everything was test, or rather symbolic.
For example, in games, characters were displayed using various icons, and locations were also created. I still remember the flying-shooter that I spent money on in the Internet club during my childhood - everything was drawn there with arrows, sticks and stars. But what a buzz I experienced then from the game! It is no longer possible to understand, repeat or explain this now (one can only remember with longing).
So, there is several versions explaining the naming of the @ sign "dog" or "dog" (probably this option is more often used by ladies). According to one of them, it was the rpg game that was popular at that time that served as the starting point for the viral distribution of the meme (I personally did not play it, or I completely forgot). In it, along with the hero, a dog traveled, which either in whole or in part (her nose) was displayed using the @ symbol. In this case, the association is quite understandable and explainable.
According to another version, the special spelling of the @ sign on some computers that were popular at that time in runet was to blame for everything. This sign was drawn with a shortened tail and looked very much like a dog.
In addition, it was always displayed when loading, and once a name mentioned by someone could find support and begin to spread virally enough to break through the generation line, completely losing its original meaning.
What is the result?
In general, there is only one conclusion - the @ symbol is called a dog for a long time we no longer understand the reason. It's just a rudiment - everyone is talking and I'm talking. Is it worth continuing? Why not. This makes Russian-speaking netizens even more mysterious in the eyes of foreigners.
Although they themselves do not lag behind and often instead of the English “at” they pronounce something like “snail” (indeed, the @ sign looks like a snail - certainly more than a dog), “monkey”, “but with a tail” (trunk , curl), “duck”, “roll”, etc. (I would also add the statement “some kind of crap” by Voronin Sr. from the series, because it also fits). The imagination of people is limitless.
P.S. By the way, I want to correct myself. “Dog” (aka “et”), after all, found a residence permit not only in email addresses. It can be said that it has successfully established itself there as well. After all, the @ sign is always placed before the user's name, for example, when replying to his message.
Good luck to you! See you soon on the blog pages site
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