sks@packet.UUCP (06/23/83)
Not long ago, friends and I sought to establish once and for all the name of the `#' symbol. We called the Sunnyvale Public Library's reference desk and asked the librarian if she could help discover the name of the symbol. She was very helpful, considering the frivolous nature of the request. After a couple days search she called back with the following article which appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, October 20, 1981 on page A-3. I thought since this discussion has generated so much interest that I should post it. Although some people call the # symbol a pound sign, Webster's New International Dictionary calls it a number mark. That's what Pacific Telephone calls it, too. According to the folks at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, a rumor started in the 1960's or earlier (and persists, as you can attest) that this symbol is called an octothorpe. One story has it that the rumor was started, or at least encouraged, by our Charles B. Octothorpe, who couldn't be reached for comment. "Octo" is a combining form from the Latin, meaning "eight". "Thorpe" means "village" in Middle English. If you look at "#" as a collection of funny-looking H's, you will note there are eight of them. Aha! We're getting somewhere, aren't we? Now all we have to do is figure out how the letter H can be a symbol for a village, town or city. H could stand for a walled city on stilts, couldn't it? So "#" must have been a symbol devised sometime after the Battle of Hastings by the League of Walled Cities on Stilts. Unfortunately, "#" is the only evidence we have that the League ever existed. This analysis should help perpetuate the octothorpe designation for "#", but it will never replace tic-tac-toe. -- Scott Smader ...!ucbvax!amd70!packet!sks
prgclb@ihuxm.UUCP (06/27/83)
So, Pacific Telephone says the official name for "#" is "number sign?" A recent Illinois Bell employee magazine article insisted that the real name is "octothorpe." Carl Blesch Bell Labs - Naperville, Ill. IH 2A-159, (312) 979-3360 ihuxm!prgclb