What is the common English name for the symbol '@'?
Answer
At sign
The common English name for the symbol “@” is the at sign.
Its original commercial meaning was “at a rate of” or “at the price of,” as in “5 items @ £2 each.” The symbol’s precise origin is uncertain, although handwritten forms resembling it appeared in medieval contexts. It became a standard typewriter character by the early 20th century.
The symbol gained global importance in 1971, when computer engineer Ray Tomlinson used it to separate a user’s name from a host computer in an email address. Today, it also appears in social-media handles, mentions, programming, and technical notation.
It is sometimes called the commercial at, at symbol, or email sign. It should not be confused with the ampersand (&), which means “and,” or the hashtag (#), which marks topics and tags.