As language expert and content creator RobWords explains<\/a>, the # symbol comes from an abbreviation of the word \u201clibra,\u201d which the Romans used for a pound of weight. Libra is what gave us the abbreviation for our own pound measurement (lb) as well as the currency symbol for the British pound (\u00a3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fast-forward a bit to the time of the printing press, when it became a habit to put a line through the \u201clb,\u201d signifying that it was an abbreviation. (So something akin to Writing \u201c \u201cIt is this scrawled attempt at the \u2018lb\u2019 pound symbol that is thought to be the origin of our hatched number sign,\u201d said RobWords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In time, Newton\u2019s scribble was simplified into two vertical and two horizontal lines. And thus, the # was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many a Gen X parent has encountered the question, \u201cWhat does \u2018press pound\u2019 mean?\u201d from their Gen Z kids while walking them through customer service calls. \u201cPress hashtag\u201d would actually mean something to them. But the # symbol is also called a number sign, a hash (especially in the United Kingdom), a sharp symbol, and an octothorpe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be fair, you\u2019ve probably never actually called it an octothorpe<\/a>. But that is its technical name. \u201cOcto\u201d comes from the symbol\u2019s eight points, formed by the ends of its four lines. The \u201cthorpe\u201d is a bit of a mystery. Some think it\u2019s a tribute to Jim Thorpe<\/a>, the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the U.S. Others believe it goes back to the Old English word \u201cthorp<\/a>,\u201d meaning \u201cvillage,\u201d because cartographers used the symbol to mark villages on maps. Still others think it\u2019s simply meaningless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for the sharp sign in music, it\u2019s pure coincidence that it looks like the pound sign; it evolved completely independently. It has nothing to do with libras, pounds, numbers, or hashtags.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Fun fact: The # symbol isn\u2019t actually called a hashtag in Internet usage. It\u2019s simply called a \u201chash.\u201d The \u201ctag\u201d is the word or phrase that follows it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ah, the classy ampersand, or &. Did you know it\u2019s actually a word in and of itself? We know it means \u201cand,\u201d but the symbol is actually a ligature of the Latin word \u201cet.\u201d Once again, its story begins in Ancient Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, it only came to be called the ampersand because of the English alphabet. The symbol was once included at the end of the alphabet, after the letter Z. When children recited the alphabet, they would tack on \u201cand per se and\u201d after saying all the letters. (\u201cPer se\u201d means \u201cby itself\u201d or \u201cin itself\u201d in Latin.) Over time, that phrase morphed into the word \u201campersand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The @ symbol may seem totally unnecessary. After all, a symbol is meant to save time, and the word \u201cat\u201d doesn\u2019t really take any longer to write than @, does it? The origins of the symbol, as RobWords explains, are a bit uncertain. Originally, it was used in accounting to indicate a per-unit price. It had all but become obsolete until 1971, when the first email was sent using the @ symbol. Now, billions of email addresses around the world rely on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n RobWords also delves into the history of \u00a7 and \u00b6, but there\u2019s a story behind every symbol we use. Finding shortcuts is a very human thing to do, and our reliance on symbols to represent words and ideas reflects that. But symbols evolve over time, which raises an interesting question: Which ones might still morph and change? (Maybe we should start a petition to make @ stand for \u201capproximately\u201d instead of \u201cat.\u201d That would at least save us all some time.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Believe it or not, we have both the Ancient Romans and Sir Isaac Newton to thank for it. Gen Xers in the United States grew up<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/743186540_27746707888257065_7536139644705871173_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10192,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10190\/revisions\/10192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}lb<\/s>.) And that\u2019s where a certain famous scientist influenced history in a non-scientific way.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHow Sir Isaac Newton helped create the modern # sign<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
lb<\/s>\u201d by hand, scribes would often draw a line above the letters to indicate it was an abbreviation, sometimes elegantly connecting the rounded part of the \u201cb\u201d to the line above in one fluid movement. But not everyone wrote so neatly. When Newton scribbled it out, it looked like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"pound](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/NewtonPoundSign.jpg?w=1024\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe multiple names and uses for the # symbol<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What about other common symbols? How did & and @ come to be?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"at](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/ANNIE-TOP-SPLASH-34.jpg?w=1024\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nEvery symbol has its story<\/h2>\n\n\n\n