ajs@hpfcla.UUCP (07/17/84)
Nf-From: hpfcla!ajs Jul 17 12:30:00 1984
It's been a while since the Net caught Terminal Mumps. I have this
dread feeling we may be in for another round soon (something to do with
the phase of the moon or the scholastic schedule). Here's an attempt to
inoculate the Net before the disease spreads. Hopefully this
vaccination will prevent an infection instead of starting one! Anyway,
if you haven't seen this before, it may amuse you.
Alan Silverstein, Hewlett-Packard Fort Collins Systems Division, Colorado
{ihnp4 | hplabs}!hpfcla!ajs, 303-226-3800 x3053, N 40 31'31" W 105 00'43"
TERMINAL MUMPS: Popular and Bizarre Character Names
Summarized from USENET articles, circa 1983.
Single characters listed in ASCII order, followed by multiples.
For each character, "official" names appear first, thence others in
order of popularity (more or less).
! exclamation point, exclamation, bang, factorial, excl, ball-bat,
smash, shriek, cuss, wow, hey
!? interabang (as one overlapped character)
" double quote, quote, dirk, literal mark, rabbit ears
# pound sign, number sign, sharp, crunch, mesh, hex, hash,
flash, grid, pig-pen, tictactoe, scratchmark, octothorp (from
Bell System)
$ dollar sign, currency symbol, buck, string (from BASIC),
escape (from TOPS-10), ding, big-money
% percent sign, percent, mod, double-oh-seven
& ampersand, amper, and, address (from C), andpersand
' apostrophe, single quote, quote, prime, tick, irk, pop, spark
() open/close parenthesis, left/right parenthesis, paren/thesis,
parenthisey, unparenthisey, open/close round bracket, ears,
so/already, wax/wane
* asterisk, star, splat, wildcard, gear, dingle
+ plus sign, plus, add, cross, intersection
, comma, tail
- hyphen, dash, minus sign, worm
. period, dot, decimal point, radix point, point, full stop, spot
/ virgule, slash, stroke, slant, diagonal, solidus, over, slat
: colon, two-spot
; semicolon, semi, hybrid
<> angle brackets, left/right angle, less/greater than, read
from / write to, from/into, from/toward, in/out, comesfrom/
gozinta (all from UNIX), funnel, brokets, crunch/zap, suck/blow
= equal sign, equals, quadrathorp, gets, half-mesh
? question mark, whatmark, what, wildchar, ques, huh
@ at sign, at, each, vortex, whorl, whirlpool, cyclone, snail
V vee, book
[] square brackets, left/right bracket, bracket/unbracket, bra/ket,
square/unsquare, U turns
\ reversed virgule, backslash, backslant, backwhack, backslat,
escape (from UNIX)
^ circumflex, caret, uparrow, hat, chevron, sharkfin, to ("to
the power of")
_ underscore, underline, underbar, under, score, backarrow, flatworm
` grave accent, grave, backquote, left quote, open quote, backprime,
unapostrophe, backspark, birk, blugle, back tick, push
{} open/close brace, left/right brace, brace/unbrace, curly bracket,
curly/uncurly, leftit/rytit, embrace/bracelet
| vertical bar, bar, or, v-bar, spike, pipe, gozinta, thru,
pipesinta (last four from UNIX)
~ tilde, swung dash, squiggle, approx, wiggle, twiddle, enyay
/* slashterisk
*/ asterslash
>> cat-astrophe