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In German it's called the Kaufmanns-Und (roughly merchant's/salesman's And). I think it may be related to advertising, if you advertise a product name (or a pro
by Dreami 4y ago
In German it's called the Kaufmanns-Und (roughly merchant's/salesman's And). I think it may be related to advertising, if you advertise a product name (or a producer name) with an "and" in it, the ampersand is much shorter and more visually appealing
- ainar-g 4y agoWhich is consistent with many Romance languages, where it's called a variation of “commercial and”. Including the Italian “e commerciale”, Portuguese “e comercial”, and Spanish “y comercial”.
- charles_f 4y agoAnd French "Et commercial". It's sometimes written as a form closer to "et", corresponding to the ligature outlined in the article
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kaichanvong 4y agoas opposed to the appealing German scharfes (ß)
- mccorrinall 4y agoDon’t believe them! ß is not sharp! Do you see any sharp edges there? Me neither! It’s as blunt it can get!
- kaichanvong 4y agothe baseline looks close to being a "sharp edge"... really though, with the "New Book called "What if? 2" by the XKCD creator, can I get him to sign it? given the previous books suggestion: a cure for the common cold, "If everyone on the planet stayed away from each other for a couple of weeks, wouldn't the common cold be wiped out?"? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30139925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30139925
- qbrass 4y agoThe curve is a convex edge. The shape provides lower surface area at the point of impact, increasing the surface pressure with the same impact force compared to a straight edge.
- pndy 4y agoGerman class teacher told us once that this particular letter can be called scharfes S and eszett Was kinda amusing when the "less involved" classmates were trying to read it as B
- kaichanvong 4y agoit's from (serif-like) handwriting really... it's easy to see that given people "describe" the as being scharfes of the entity `ß`
- bitwize 4y agoThat's like how the symbol @ used to be called "commercial at" (this is its Unicode name). This is because of how sales were listed on receipts and such, think "4 apples @ 50¢ each".
- sfjailbird 4y agoIn the subcontinent, almost everybody pronounces this "at-the-rate-of". I guess they learn this in school or something. Makes you do a double take the first couple of times someone reads you an email adress :)
- blowski 4y ago"@" has a lot of interesting names - monkey, herring, pig's tail, strudel, mouse, elephant's trunk, and "arroba" (a unit of weight, like a bushel).
- gvx 4y agoYeah, in Dutch it's "apenstaartje" (little monkey's tail), although the last decades, it's becoming far more common to use the English "at".
- froh 4y agoit's "Klammeraffe" in German, spider monkey, and figuratively a small monkey clinging to / clasping someone or something.
- yesbabyyes 4y agoI kept a collection of names for @ on my first website: https://web.archive.org/web/19981202002949/www.student.nada.kth.se/~f96-lla/@.html https://web.archive.org/web/19981202002949/www.student.nada....
- david927 4y agoIt's "zavináč" in Czech -- pickled herring. If you buy them in a jar, they're rolled up, looking a lot like that symbol.
- bla3 4y agoI always thought it's "amper's and" for that reason, and "amper" must mean "Kaufmann".