The 3,000-Year Journey of the @ Sign and Its Cultural Legacy

Published: 24 September 2025. The English Chronicle Desk. English Chronicle Online

The simple, ubiquitous symbol “@” is far more than just a character on a keyboard. Across the world, it carries different names and meanings: in Taiwan, it is called the “little mouse”; in Russia, it is “dog”; in Hebrew, “strudel”; and in Dutch, it is affectionately referred to as “monkey’s tail.” Yet behind this unassuming glyph lies a story spanning over three millennia, bridging cultures, languages, and historical epochs.

In 2010, Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), made a bold curatorial decision. She created an exhibition that celebrated ordinary objects embedded in daily life—Post-it Notes, paper clips, kitchen tools, and even M&Ms—showing that everyday items could hold museum-level significance. As part of this exhibit, she acquired the @ sign for MoMA’s permanent collection, recognizing the symbol’s extraordinary cultural weight and hidden history.

At first glance, the @ sign seems purely modern, a digital-era creation. But Keith Houston, author of Shady Characters: The Secret History of Punctuation, explains that its roots trace back to ancient commerce. The symbol originated as an abbreviation, closely tied to amphoras—tall, handled clay pots used by the ancient Greeks to store wine, olive oil, and grains. Merchants frequently needed a shorthand to indicate “a certain number of amphoras at a specific price,” and over time, the letter “a” with a curling tail came to represent the unit. The earliest known use in this context dates to 1536, when a merchant named Francesco Lapi wrote from Seville to Rome, using @ to denote an amphora of wine.

As centuries passed, the amphora fell out of use, but the symbol endured. Accountants and record-keepers used it to indicate “at a cost of,” and when typewriters spread in the 19th century—especially across the United States—the @ became a standard key. According to Gerry Leonidas, typography professor at the University of Reading, the symbol survived on typewriters because it served a practical function in business correspondence, helping standardize notation and reduce errors. When computers arrived, the @ key came along, initially of little use outside of accounting, until computer scientist Ray Tomlinson harnessed it for the first email in 1971. Tomlinson selected @ to indicate a user’s location within a network, effectively linking a person to a server, and in doing so, transformed a centuries-old commercial shorthand into a cornerstone of modern digital communication.

As the internet spread globally, the symbol took on new cultural identities. Italians call it chiocciola (“snail”), Czech speakers say zavináč (“rolled herring”), and the Dutch term apenstaartje literally means “monkey’s tail.” In Russian, sobaka (“dog”) captures the curled form of the character. In Spain and Portugal, it is known as arroba, a historical unit of weight and measure, now repurposed in some contexts as a gender-neutral symbol in written Spanish.

Beyond its cultural versatility, the @ sign has reshaped digital identity itself. Leonidas points out that when used as a handle, the @ enforces a singular, continuous identifier, stripping spaces and requiring a unified presentation of names. It demands uniqueness, effectively compelling users to craft a personal identity that is both concise and recognizable online. Linguistic and social research confirms that choosing a username is a deeply personal process, linking the @ directly to one’s digital persona. For many, @ is inseparable from their online presence, representing a carefully curated version of the self in virtual spaces.

From ancient amphoras to email addresses and social media handles, the @ symbol has endured as a visual and functional bridge across time, cultures, and technology. Its journey reminds us that even the most ordinary symbols can carry profound historical and cultural significance, quietly shaping how humans communicate, organize, and express identity across centuries.

The @ sign is more than a punctuation mark; it is a testament to human creativity, adaptation, and the surprising endurance of symbols that begin in humble practicalities and evolve into icons of global connectivity.