octothorpe

This mark has several common names: 'hash', 'hatch', 'pound sign', and 'octothorp' among them. The name "pound sign" is an Americanism that causes some confusion in countries that use the pound for currency.

It was also noted that the # is a medieval abbreviation for Latin "numerus" - it is a cursive 'n' with a horizontal slash through it, much modified and abstracted.

One possible derivation of the name "octothorp" was provided by Charles Bigelow:

... old English "thorp" meant 'hamlet' or 'village' (I'm not sure of the difference, except maybe hamlet is smaller, as its apparent diminutive suffix would suggest), and is derived from a much older Indo-European word *treb- for 'dwelling', which turns out to mean 'beam' or 'timber' in Latin "trabs", winding up as "trave" in Anglo-Latin, like "architrave" - the beam resting on a column, or "trab-" as in "trabecula" - a small supporting beam or bar. As Voltaire said, etymology is a science in which the vowels count for nothing and the consonants for very little.

So, maybe "octothorp" means "8-beams", which makes a kind of sense if we take the 8 projections to be the thorps, or trabs or traves. Though it's only a "quadrathorp" if we think that the beams connect.


Another explanation has it that the octothorp is a "thorp"' surrounded by eight cultivated fields.

see hash

Thanks! :-D

Npydyuan! You've been away for a bit too--welcome back. :-)

Ah, let's give old at sign some strudel as a consolation!

Poor number sign and tic tac toe didn't even get participant ribbons. And our old buddy at sign wishes he could have a cool name like all his friends.

In the pound versus hash war, there was no winner-- octothorpe took the prize.