Several days ago, speaking by phone with the Japanese, I with horror have found out, that I can not dictate an e-mail address. That in Russian is called as "dog", and in English "at", I, of course, knew. But for ten years of studying of the Japanese language to me never there was a sign on-japonski, even in the dictionary it is not designated. Having blushed, I have dictated the address in English, thus the Japanese in any way has not expressed the surprise. Really they do not have own name of "dog"? After that, of course, I have decided to meet lacks and to learn, how ours "the electronic doggie" name in other languages.

To Begin, certainly, it was necessary from studying of history of occurrence of this sign.

I have addressed For the answer to this question to the English-Russian encyclopaedic dictionary on the electronic technics in which it is specified, that the symbol is fast-writing variant of an English pretext "at".

As to, the scientists who were carrying out researches about occurrence of this sign, for example, Frenchman Denis Muzerelli has assumed that, that has appeared as a result of other inclination in a writing when merchants of France and Germany have started to write down a badge "`".

American scientist Bertold Ullman has put forward the assumption, that the sign has been invented by medieval monks for reduction of a Latin word "ad" which was often used as the universal word meaning "on", "in", "in the relation", etc.

The Italian expert of history of language Jordjio Steybail has found out documents of XV century in which the symbol was used for a designation of a measure of volume - amphoras (in latino - the Spanish dictionary anfora is translated as arroba - a weight equal 12,5 kg.)

The History of occurrence of a sign as a result has led me to the conclusion, that the symbol exists since XV century - both in Spanish-Arabian, and in Greek-Romance languages - as the commercial symbol used for a designation of units of measure of the goods.

All know, that the sign is a symbol of e-mail and is used for division of a name of the user on behalf of a host. The first this badge was applied by the leading engineer of company BBN Technologies Rej Tomlinson in 1971. On the keyboard this key designated an English pretext "at".

To tell the truth, I never and anywhere did not meet use of this sign somewhere else, except the electronic address, however on the first model of a mechanical typewriter, the symbol already was present.

So, at different nations of the world the symbol is typed on the computer equally, and written by words and said differently. Besides, its name on sleng too differs, but that is characteristic, the majority of users see in "dog" an animal.

Englishmen, Americans, Frenchmen, Italians name "snail". Africans, Dutches, Poles, Germans prefer to name it "a monkey's tail". Danes can tell "an elephant trunk", Norwegians "a pork tail", Chineses - "little mouse", and Hungarians - "worm". Russian for some reason name this sign a dog, instead of Finns who have far left from us - a cat.

But not all see only animals. Also among sleng names are looked through... Delicacies.

For example, Swedes a symbol name "a roll with cinnamon", Israelis - "shtrudel", and Czechs "herring rollmops".

Here people have thought up what interesting names for this symbol, which each of us uses daily.

Well, and as to Japanese... They use English "attomark" and with animals at them the sign does not cause any associations.