Where does the @ sign come from?

        The 'at' sign probably originated in the Middle Ages; either as an abbreviation of the Latin 'ad'(at,towards,by) or as a mercantile abbreviation for 'amphora'. The symbol has endured to this day in Spain, Portugal and France, as the unit of weight 'arroba', which is equal to about 15litres or 10kg. It also occurs in old German Legal texts, while in English-speaking countries it served as an assignment of price (5eggs @ 20cents).

      From these distant beginnings, the symbol made its way onto typewriter keyboards, where it waited to be chosen by the author of the world's first e-mail when he was looking for an address component. In 1971, Ray Tomlin son needed a sing that could be found on all common keyboards but wasn't a letter of the alphabet. With the @ sign he managed to provide an unambiguous separator between the two parts of an e-mail address.

  The @ sign around world
The @ sign is quite unusual in appearance-which has caused it to be given all sorts of imaginative names around the world.

              Monkey's tail                     South Africa
              Cat's tail                            Finland           
            Maggot, worm                     Hungary
            Snail                                    Italy, France, Isrel, Korea,UkrainEsperanto         
            Cinnamon twirl                    Sweden
            Strudel                                Israel   
            Ear muff                              Iceland       
            Ear                                     Turkey 
            Pig's tail                             Denmark