What do They Call the at Symbol in Other Countries?

In the United States, @ is usually spoken as "at," though it's official name is "commercial at." The at symbol, so ubiquitous today because of its use in email addresses, originated in commerce. The precise etymology of the sign is not known, but variations have been used in retail and accounting for centuries, where it's used to communicate cost per item. Now, it's not uncommon to see grocery store receipts with the at symbol used to communicate exactly the same thing: 2.45lbs Fuji Apples @ $1.99lb = $4.88 means that the unit price for Fujis is $1.99 per pound.

Since 1972 the at sign has been working double duty. Ray Tomlinson is credited with using @ to indicate the location of a user on a specific host, and the format of the email address was born. This created a new problem for non-English speakers, though. Since the word "at" and the symbol @ match so nicely in our language, English speakers may take for granted the fact that in other languages, the name for such a funny little symbol may not be so obvious.

In our continual quest to educate and inform, here is wiseGEEK's own collection of how @ translates to English from a variety of the world's languages.

Language	Word	Translation	IMAGE
Croatian	manki	monkey
Czech	zavinac	"rollmops," a way of serving pickled herring
Danish	snabel	elephant's trunk
Dutch	apenstaartje	little monkey tail
Finnish	miau, or miaumau	"meow marks"
German	klammeraffe	spider monkey
Greek	papaki	duckling
Hebrew	krukhit	strudel
Hungarian	kukac	worm, mite, or maggot
Italian	chioccoiola	snail
Mandarin Chinese--Taiwan	xiao lao shu	little mouse
Norwegian	grisehale	pig's tail
Russian	sobaka	dog
Swedish	kanelbulle	cinnamon bun
Thai	ai tua yiukyiu	the wiggling worm-like character
Turkish	kulak	ear