88 $<► SHADY CHARACTERS
tail” in Dutch; zavinâc, or “rollmop herring” in Czech and Slovak;
Klammeraffe, or “spider monkey” in German; strudel, or a roll-shaped
bun, in Hebrew; kukac, or “worm” in Hungarian; grisehale, or “pig’s tail”
in Norwegian, and gül, or “rose” in Turkish. French and Italian have
both formal terms—respectively arobase, an archaic unit of weight,
and anfora, or “amphora”—and also the more whimsical escargot and
chiocciola, both meaning “snail.” English deploys the cheerlessly direct
“commercial at” or, simply, “at sign.”32
Stabile observed that despite the symbol’s many figurative aliases,
only a few names were unrelated to its shape: the English “commercial
at,” the French arobase (also rendered in Spanish and Portuguese as
arroba), and the Italian anfora, or “amphora.” “Commercial at” evi¬
dently described the character’s typical usage, but arobase, arroba, and
“amphora” bore further investigation.33
Amphorae were long-necked pottery storage jars with tapered
bases, used for centuries by the Greeks and Romans to transport
cereals, olives, oil, and wine, and the word referred not only to the
vessels themselves but also related units of volume and weight.34 The
standard Roman amphora, embodied in the amphora Capitolina kept
securely in Rome itself, had avolume of a cubic foot, or about twenty-
six liters.35 The Spanish and Portuguese arroba, on the other hand, was
a customary unit of weight and volume, representing either a quarter
of a quintal, or hundredweight,* or, alternatively, a volume of around
sixteen liters of liquid.37 The word arroba itself came from the Arabic
al-rub , or “one-fourth,” a term absorbed into the languages of the
Iberian Peninsula under Moorish rule, and which later made its way
into French as arobase?*
The key to Stabile’s discovery was a letter sent from Seville to
The Spanish and Portuguese units ofweight are actually slightly different: the Spanish arroba
was around twenty-five pounds, while the Portuguese unit was thirty-two pounds.3^
THE @ SYMBOL §<► 89
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; К4 ^8 J oi¿?V» с чар К J«t ti Ai <*rvU гтѵм іЬС
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2f * «*** и ’/ Mae ,Lyc. U (01 J. (_ /гг ft*
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лск jn ly 1-е üw faite*« ßatieur *|®,e "‘ С**.
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. Jimmn« ln» Jooe » io к в лso аид»ів
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Dll"lf
v q«. ¡U* Ku,'y«.fdlr*«-l 41* f
ca** 4^ Aio tvnííUt nwanhKno^a«,са|*Ц * ' (*ХЧ j
1 Tnih fcr«n. < Уіыі ca-?VvUa«rKn-WiW -^ann.inTf|ln^^ p\^l.nUcaTep^*ATf () A r* rv ¿¡ j. T)c . Jjnw» 1Л tsnivi » » j• tnie (Vuaìiit^ tomo T.ofnienèia 3t IfMM mr.TUaíno i> ясл-д.сл 5Сл «.tv? jeт (j*не rfr«avia тпм * ^°X ^ | яОвМ дсвч-іс М'упЬхм-міія coa ù Л r-moiva atrC, 1 \i ,ЧС<ЙС'«-Х»*М ^omo rncjb rutííb'Ac j^ufq.ia д^іЛпоі mitawa« ¡ ,V,íkL i.A. V.uino, (i[. A,,. ¿i-огегТййа í? L jit ynte U.Î ,.fu .AW X , I tôjUq i'l inuij ітл'1,т/л q Г^л-тлг ùii^jnïieitôh puvntAcueo rh, in: fei: in tait rvn'iuio-niu^î -]«(£С,- j »‘i: ij^ttata ljL qlita .uAuuiiint 7J',,to»ii. Aunq0ji"«^ “íf ’» pp jß^F/gare 5.3 @ for amphora in Francesco Lapi’s letter of May 4,1536. Rome on May 4,1536, by a merchant named Francesco Lapi, in which
ttu Vajia ij»C cubu-n t'f ,луд qrjpt cu|Lu-i
Lapi discussed the arrival in Spain of three trading ships from the
New World. Writing that an amphora of wine sold there for seventy
or eighty ducats, he used the familiar @ symbol as an abbreviation for
the word “amphora.”39