Excerpts from user-submitted responses to a Guardian query:
IN ENGLISH, the symbol is boringly known as “commercial at”, but other languages offer more imaginative names.
IN ISRAEL the @ symbol is often referred to as “strudel”
IN SWEDEN AND DENMARK, it is called snabel-a , (“a” with an elephant’s trunk), or kanelbulle , the Swedish equivalent of the Chelsea bun.
IN GERMANY, it is called Klammerraffe, (a clinging monkey) or affenschwanz (ape tail).
IN BRAZIL, the symbol is known as arroba, which is also an old measure of 15 kilos.
IN ITALY, the symbol is known as a chiocciolina, which means “small snail”
IN FINLAND, it is called miuku-mauku because it looks like a sleeping cat. It’s also known as a mouse’s tail.
IN HUNGARY, the @ symbol is called kukatsz, which means little worm
IN NORWAY, they call the @ kroellalfa, meaning “curled a”
IN CZECH, it is called zavinac, which means a rolled pickled herring
IN FRANCE, it has been called petit escargot (“little snail”)
IN JAMAICA, it’s known as the “block,” the swirl depicting the feeling of nausea and dizziness from having spent far too much time passing the rizla and herb. Derived from the term ‘block-up’ or in plain English, stoned
IN RUSSIA, the @ symbol is often called sabachka, which means little dog
IN THE PHILLIPINES, the official name of the at-sign is “amphora,“ taken from the name of a jar they used in the ancient Mediterranean to measure the volume of things they would trade (where the @ symbol was supposedly first used)
IN GREECE, it’s called papaki which means little duck.
IN KOREA, it is called golbangi for the resemblance to a snail
IN POLAND, it is małpa, monkey
IN NAHUATL, it is referred to as the O otztli, the capital letter “O” pregnant, possibly due to the apparent little “o” inside the big “O”
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