Let's explore where #@&§ came from. And download the Opera browser for free here: https://opr.as/06-Opera-browser-robwords and enjoy its many handy features. Did you know #, &, @, § and ¶ are all made up of letters? In fact, they each represent specific words. In this video, I'll explain where these little symbols came from and what they're actually called. Join me as we explore the hidden logic of your keyboard. 🏴 ROBWORDS LIVE 🏴 At the Edinburgh Fringe from 6-16th August, 2026 Tickets: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/robwords-live 👕COOL TSHIRTS: https://robwords.com/shop ⭐️PATREON COMMUNITY: https://patreon.com/robwords 📝FREE NEWSLETTER: https://www.robwords.com/newsletter CAMERA: Manuel Vering EDITING: Martyn Williams EVERYTHING ELSE: Rob Watts Check me out on the web, on Twitter & TikTok: https://robwords.com https://x.com/robwordsYT https://tiktok.com/@robwords ==CHAPTERS== 0:00 Introduction 0:20 # Hash/pound/octothorp origin 5:40 # Musical sharp origin 8:35 & Ampersand origin 10:35 @ At symbol origin 14:26 § Section sign origin 15:05 ¶ Pilcrow origin 17:44 * Asterisk and others 19:35 👉 Manicule
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I think a video on the origin of other math symbols (+-=%√) would be interesting
I like to call it the octoÞorp
The indentation of a paragraph to leave space blew my mind. By the way, we call # in Spain almohadilla (little pillow).
The "manicule" is definitely making a mild come back in the form of emoji like "👉". You've even used "👇" in the pinned comment!
20:05 that snake looks like a modern curly bracket, highlighting multiple lines.
Fun fact: in Mandarin we call @ a 「小老鼠］, literally "little rat"
In biology, a "dagger" before a genus or species name indicates the organism is extinct.
Hit me with some more symbol origin stories 👇And download the Opera browser for free here: /06-Opera-browser-robwords and enjoy its many handy features.
In German the "§" is called Paragraf while the German word for "paragraph" is "Absatz"
In Brazilian Portuguese, the most widely used name for the symbol # is "jogo da velha", our name for "tic tac toe".
Hopeless at English when at school. Not much better now, at 73. But Rob has managed to educate me in a way that I find strangely mesmerising! Cheers, Rob.
RobSymbols
One minor detail before Twitter was that #channel-name was used to indicate channels or topics at IRC network. The IRC was a very early predecessor of Teams or Slack. So Twitter just took an earlier concept of of indicating a discussion channel with # + topic name and called it as a hashtag.
i'm a "Xennial" American, and every telephone recording I remember hearing called # the "pound sign". I never heard it called hash until they started appearing in hashtags. I just love discovering new (to me) intercontinental differences in English!
15:20 I turn on the pilcrow ¶ all the time in text editors when I edit documents, especially if someone else created it, it lets you know if where the hard returns are vs the soft returns or spaces & tabs it really helps in fixing layout issues.
In the US, the # on the phone was called the 'pound sign'. That obviously would have been confusing to say in the UK, so they called it the hash instead. I don't recall 'hash' for # being used in the US in conversation until the internet in the early 2000s.
In Finnish we call the # symbol the "twig fence" (risuaita), because it looks like one. And some people call the @ symbol "miukumauku", which is onomatopoeia for the sound that cats make, because it looks like a cat, supposedly.
Yay, a new RobWords.
Samwich? No. Sammich!
We've got some pretty inventive words for some signs in Sweden as well. # = Brädgård, translates to lumberyard as in stacked lumber. @ = Either snabel-a (elephant-trunk-A), or kanelbulle (cinnamon-roll).