I’ve been using that as an abbreviation for pound since before you were born!

There's not a lot of debate out there regarding "hashtags" but I still wanted to dig deep to get to the bottom of why in recent years people have started referring to this symbol, "#", as a "hashtag". I wondered what was this thing really called?

All of my life I have been indifferently been referring to this symbol (#) as a "number sign" or have been hitting the button right of zero on a telephone keypad whenever someone told me to hit "pound". Then suddenly I'm seeing the "number sign" followed by letters and I was confused and annoyed.

We first started seeing this random symbol start creeping into popular culture when it would pop up on the TV screen as we were urged to vote our favorite singer on American Idol, "Text your favorite artist to #25564..." and I'm pretty sure I saw it when we were asked to donate money to relief funds for the victims of Natural Disasters. Then out of nowhere... I'm suddenly bombarded with random phrases preceded by a number sign. And if it wasn't bad enough that I could barely read the phrases because of the lack of spaces between the words, they also started calling it a "hashtag"... It was as if the entire internet teamed up to annoy me.

As the months dragged on I began to realize that had something to do with Twitter and Instagram. Personally, I'm not much of a Twitter guy (I ramble on too much and refuse to be constrained by the character limit) and I don't like the shape of the Instagram photos (and have accidently "liked" too many photos by trying to double-tap to zoom-in). But I have no problem if other people use Twitter or Instagram and if the "#" helps them accomplish something on there, then that's cool with me... But I wanted to know, why is it called a "hashtag"? When was the name changed from "Number Sign" or "Pound Sign on the Phone Keypad"??

So, after a couple of years of wondering to myself, I decided to look it up. As it turns out, this symbol has a variety of names and one of the names has been "hash" since about 1960. If you're a "#nerd" like me, you might find the rest of this post interesting:

The earliest English term for a symbol similar to "#" that etymologist have identified was the 15th Century word, "hatch", which meant 'interwoven strips of metal' and was derived from the Old French word hacher or hache. This makes sense, because the symbol does look like interwoven lines. In the 1960's the word resurfaced as "hash" in British English and referred specifically to the # on phone keypads and computer keyboards and was also used to precede a numeral.

In American English the "#" was simply called a "number sign" when preceding a numeral and found its North American denotation as a "pound sign" when used as the symbol for pounds of weight (e.g. "5# of sand"). British English uses the £ symbol for pounds. However, the names for this symbol did not end there...

In the late 1960s or early 1970s somebody at Bell Labs decided to name the symbol "octothorpe". The specific derivation is uncertain but the common consensus is that "octo" refers to the symbol's eight points, though nobody is quite sure of why the word is concluded with "thorpe". Some think it has something to do with the athlete "Jim Thorpe" and others point to the English word "thorp" which means "hamlet". Either way, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense - but everyone agrees that "octo" is referring to the eight points.

Because the origin is cloudy, it can't be explained why Bell Labs decided to produce this new name, however I have a feeling it was born out of the same frustration that I have for calling something by multiple names. I believe the person who came up with this word, decided that there should be one universal term for the # symbol... and that word would be OCTOTHORPE!!! Unfortunately for him... about 40 years later somebody Twitter decided to coin the term "hashtag" and octothorpe will likely be forgotten forever. #fail.

So, in the end I've found that "hash" has been an acceptable name for the # symbol all along... just not in America. I guess it turns out to be another example of how social media is changing the American vernacular forever. #rememberwhenNetflixhadaQueue?

tl:dr

Ben @ 3/12/2017 22:55

tl:dr

Me either. Google’d “#” + copy/paste.

Up til a few years ago it was a pound or number sign for me.

At least until the SNL skit about hashtags

Too long, DID actually read and will forever call # an octothorpe from now on


Thanks farquad

#’s is as many characters as lbs and # ' and s are further apart on the keyboard than lbs so it's more effort...

From the Krampusnacht DC charity walk:

Grandma after speculating that the neighbor across the street must be deathly ill because she doesn't have Christmas lights up:
"I always thought God's gonna get them for all the things they do. The way they park that car in front of our house! Oh, you rotten bastards!"

I am at the doctor's and I just got a flu shot. Update that POTD about it.

DR @ 4/12/2017 8:21

Grandma after speculating that the neighbor across the street must be deathly ill because she doesn't have Christmas lights up: "I always thought God's gonna get them for all the things they do. The way they park that car in front of our house! Oh, you rotten bastards!"

I think we just found our next Trump cabinet position nominee.

tbh I think Grandma is an atheist. She just likes the concept of God punishing those she cannot.

DR @ 4/12/2017 15:08

tbh I think Grandma is an atheist. She just likes the concept of God punishing those she cannot.

I'm not seeing anything yet to disqualify her from any open positions.

I decided to bid on that Coronation Elsa doll because it's a good deal and if I'm gonna have an Elsa doll, that's the one I want, and I was the only bidder for like three days (I think it was because the listing's weirdly hard to find in a search. I only found it because the site suggested it), so of course tonight someone else is trying to get it. They need to fuck off. I'm not giving up. I lost out on that first Elsa the other night and now I'm really determined, which is pissing me off because fuck Frozen.