Regis, I'd like to call a friend.
Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 20:51:38 +0000
From: Michael Fraser <mike.fraser@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: 12.0441 'number sign', 'hash sign', but "octothorpe"??
> A colleague reports hearing the "pound sign" on keypads defined as
> "octothorpe". OED knows nothing of this, or I have it mis-spelled. Is
> this expression known?
Who needs the OED when the likes of AltaVista provides us with the largest
corpus of language usage...
Whilst there seems to be general agreement that octothorp(e) refers to the
hash, pound, pound sign, number, number sign, sharp, (garden) fence,
crunch, mesh, hex, flash, grid, pig-pen, tictactoe, scratch (mark),
(garden) gate, hak, oof, rake, sink, corridor, unequal, punch mark,
crosshatch (#) (see taro.poi.net, there is not
overall agreement on how this character came to be termed the octothorp in
particular. (As an aside, I hadn't realised that it was so common across
the Atlantic to refer to # as a pound sign even though it is frequently
used in British email as a *substitute* for the er, pound sign).
The page given above which lisst the names simply glosses the
term with, 'from Bell System (orig. octalthorpe)'. Further investigation
led me to the *true story* of how the term octothorpe came to be
(http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/history/octothorpe.the.
real.story), apparently the invention of Don McPherson at Bell Labs: octo-
referring
the the eight points and -thorpe a curious reference to Jim Thorpe whose
olympic medals McPherson was campaigning to have returned from Sweden.
However, brodynewmedia.com gives a quote from Robert
Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style (1992) at variance with the
'real story'. The etymology of Octothorp lying in octo- for eight and
-thorp for field. Thus # represents eight fields clustered around a
central square (or village).
This last point is mentioned at nwalsh.com
which also notes that the # could be a development of the scribal
abbreviation for 'numerus'. However, for octothorp the author reproduces
an alternative etymology suggesting that the Old English 'thorp' for
village derives from the earlier 'treb' for dwelling, and this itself is
related to the Latin 'trabs' for beam. Thus octothorp is 'eight beams'.
Quadrathorp, the author observes, might have been more appropriate. Hmmm.
Finally, # apparently bears some similarity to the Chinese character for
'communal farm' (which I find vaguely appropriate on Humanist) and I
suspect that Nicholson Baker has something to say about it in his essay on
electronic writing symbols (and their origins) in The Size of Thoughts
(1997) but I have neither this nor the OED with me here, only the Web.
Michael
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