In British medical short hand it means fracture. I don’t know how it came to mean this, but goes back to at least the 70’s. So #NOF = fractured neck of femur ( broken hip)
To me, the symbol changes names depending on context. For example, -If it's on a telephone, it's a pound sign. -If it's used in a numerical list, it's shorthand for "number." -If it's used before a word or phrase, it's a hashtag. -If it's used after a letter, it's pronounced "sharp" (whether it be music notation or in names for programming languages).
Re: calling # the 'hex': In the 80's a specific use case of the # sign as the "number sign" in early coding was as a prefix to a number in hexadecimal rather than decimal. When read aloud, the # would be read as "Hex" to indicate the same thing.
I was using assembly language and machine code on the 6502 processor starting in the mid 70s before I got an Apple ][ computer which used this processor. I was reading 8080 code before that, and both used # as hexadecimal. Its digits are 0123456789ABCDEF so 16 bits would store 4 digits 0000 to FFFF
Yep, it was used on Internet Relay Chat to identify chat channels starting in the early 90s. Not sure if it was used as a social identifier anywhere earlier than that, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
I always find calling it a "hashtag" to be annoying. The hashtag is the combined construct of '#' and a word; it is a word specially marked as a keyword for tagging whatever contains it. It is a tag marked with a hash, hence hashtag. But once you call the '#' itself a "hashtag" you end up with the apparently recursive definition that a hashtag (the marker) is a hashtag (the symbol) followed by a keyword.
I wanted to comment this exact thing as well. I hoped it would be brought up in the video. It can't be hashtag without the tag part of it. The # is still a hash sign even if it's used in a hashtag. I think this misnomer of calling the sign a hashtag comes from the way you pronounce a hashtag.
Doppelkreuz souds very confusing to musicians, because there is a symbol in music called Doppelkreuz (Double Sharp) and looks like 𝄪 just like a x and means the same as two sharps. and the single sharp (Kreuz) ♯ looks like the Hashtag.
@@TheModicaLiszt But that association led to the language name C# pronounced "C-sharp" nevertheless. In unicode, they are definitely different code points: U+0023 "NUMBER SIGN" and U+266F "MUSIC SHARP SIGN".
@@MattMcIrvin Fun "fact": C# is secretly C++. Take C++, make the two plus signs diagonally adjacent, extend the lines until they cross, and it becomes C#.
And in my English speaking, not-USA country the telephone always called it "hash". It always irked me as a child/teenager the way the yanks always called it "pound". (It kinda still does, but these days I realise how unreasonable that feeling really is)
9:45 My best guess would be hexadecimal notation? We use hexadecimal notation for colors, and I believe we put a # before to represent it. So it wouldn't be surprising for some people to call it hex, if it represents an hex number.
As a millennial Australian I’ve always known it as hash, in my experience a lot of message banks on phones say “to end your message press the hash key or just hang up”
In Brazil, before the rise of Twitter, the most common name for the telephone # key certainly was "jogo-da-velha". Jogo da velha is the Brazilian Portuguese name for tic-tac-toe, but literaly translates to "old woman's game". I guess that key was pretty much only seen in telephones and # has never had a wide spread use with the meaning of "number" in the Portuguese language.
i also heard it was used for directorys on the web? like #google or #search engine ti make seraching the net eaiser, or hash TAGs for things, i wonder this is why now when serach the internet its ofton garbage adn more garbage? that all these #freeadvertisingformultibilliondollarcorperations is screwing it up?
I am from Hong Kong. We called the symbol # as 「井」here which originally means "a well". We literally have a character in Cantonese which is exactly the same with this symbol lol.
1:22 The % sign was also used to denote "c/o", as in "care of", in mailing addresses, back when typewriters were commonplace. Ex.: NAME % OTHER NAME 173 SOMEWHERE PLACE NOWHERE, LB 10000
Hashtag isn't the symbol, it's the kind of tag, which includes the hash symbol at the beginning. When we read "hashtag winning" from #winning, we are not reading the symbol as the word "hashtag", we are labeling the whole thing as a "hashtag" (which is a tag labeled with the hash symbol) and then providing the word or phrase it includes as a tag
I called it a "Hex" sign ever since i was a kid, before the Internet was a thing, and before most people even had computers at home, so it's not because of the colour codes. I'm more inclined to believe that it's due to older generation of Singaporeans/M'sians (who weren't particularly good at speaking/hearing English) mishearing or mispronouncing the word "hash" and saying "hex" instead, and then teaching the next generation that it's "hex".
I find it interesting that the programming language "C#" is called "C sharp" although other names for "#" are way more popular in the domain of programming
That is because, The C language was named as the letter after B, there was previously a B programming language. The C++ language followed, and that referred to the increment operator in C so C+1 C# was named as the note in the musical scale after C.
It's still the pound sign to me. I know hashtag is probably more common now, but I still hear it as "pound" on phone menus. I don't think I've ever called a number and gone through a menu where it told me to push "hashtag" to choose a specific option.
'Hashtag' is literally an internet creation - a tag that is denoted by the hash symbol. It's still called a hash in the UK but as US keyboards don't have use for the £ symbol, it was allocated to # with the same ASCII code. So # became "Pound" and it's stuck in general use. Modern keyboards have different layouts so it's no longer the case though.
If I'm talking about the symbol itself, I call it "number sign". If it's denoting a tag in a social media post, I call it "hashtag". If it's in code (e.g., #include ), I call it "hash".
8:34 Around 1988 an issue of Games Magazine had a fake ad for the * and # buttons on a phone (They're not used for anything yet, but in the near future they will let you override a busy signal)
Now you know you were right! As a Brit, I always wondered why # was called the 'pound sign' instead of £. I thought it was just because US keyboards lacked a £ key!
There's an old Simpsons episode in which Troy McClure (RIP) refers to this symbol on a landline phone as "the pound sign" which always confused me... until now.
The sharp symbol in music originally had the turned form shown at 5:41. Now the horizontals of the modern ♯ are both thicker and angled, so they can stand out against staff lines.
I had many family members who worked for "Ma Bell". To THEM it WAS an "octothorpe", To everyone else "pound" (for phone use), Otherwise, "number sign".
You used to see it on the cast list at the end of US TV shows to identify who played unnamed characters, e.g. Policeman #1 John Smith, Polioceman #2 Fred Bloggs.
I've never heard the name octothrope before, that's probably a British exclusive thing. I've seen it a lot used to replace the word number, but never in well written text. It's usually used in forms or informative text where space is limited. It's usually paired with a descriptive name like: Phone #, Account #, ID #. In american english it's usually called pound when paired with a string of numbers and hashtag on social media.
@LouisStreet that can be an insider thing, because those automated answering machines call it pound, which I assume should be a nationwide standard (because all of them use it, not just some).
"Octothorpe" was coined in America; Bell was exclusively American. From other comments, I get the feeling the name was taken very seriously inside the (vast) Bell organization, but not so much outside it.
You could also specify 1 digit hex values as well for each field. For example, #333 is short for #333333. You just double up the digits to get the full hex value. #RGB becomes #RRGGBB, which is convenient for roughing out a palette when you don't have to worry about colors too much yet because they're way easier to parse mentally.
Outside of the WWW, it's rare for # to mean hexadecimal. In the 80s, it was far more common to use $ for hex, though other symbols were used too. Some languages got a bit annoying as, having used $ for hexadecimal for years, they decided they needed a symbol for decimal and chose # -- dollar for hex, hash for decimal. ;)
2:46 Perhaps in some contexts, but the symbol for pound weight was much more often written lb or lbs (with or without a dot). For example 2 lb or 2 lbs. But not 2#.
7bit Ascii didn't have the £ symbol, so the UK started to use the # for the Pound sterling. Writing scripts for importing data was extra tricky at times.
you could say both are tags, using two meanings of "tag" in this context. In "#something", "#" is a tag (extra piece of information that the software uses) that means that "something" is a tag (word to help searching for particular phrases in posts)
I always used to call it the "number sign" because when I was a kid, that was the only context in which I saw it used, to indicate a number in a sequence. "Pound sign" baffled me because, while I heard it called that, it wasn't used to indicate pounds-weight in the 1970s-80s US; that was always "lb." and of course we didn't use pounds sterling. "Hash mark" had some currency as well, and "hashtag" is an obvious coinage from there but it still sounds strange for me to hear "hashtag" used *outside* of a social-media context.
In graduate school around 24-25 years ago, I was getting a master's degree in computer information systems. We had students from several countries and occasionally this symbol came up because of confusion. My classmates from the UK, called it hash and those from the US called it the pound symbol. Ultimately we settled on calling it hash or octothorpe. I would love to see you do the poem "Waka Waka Bang Splat" that is beloved by us old geeks!
A couple of years ago, I (in my 20's) had a prof (in her 30's) call it a hashtag when I used it for the number meaning. An older student (late 40's) mentioned it means number too. I have heard it as a pound, number, hashtag, and sharp sign.
I think it is incorrect to state that the name "pound sign" is not used very much anymore. It's used by both construction workers who use it as a shorthand for pounds, and also by telephone operators who instruct people to press the pound key. That's the name I would label it generally, and from its history of being originally used for the pound by weight, it seems the most accurate name for it. As another commenter said, however, its name should vary based on its usage. It's a different but identical symbol whether it's used in music, numerical lists, internet key phrases, or on a telephone.
[#] (read as "hash") is the second extended play by South Korean girl group Loona. It was released on February 5, 2020, by Blockberry Creative and distributed by Kakao M.
The Pound as currency was originally literally a pound weight of sterling silver… (92.5% Silver with the balance usually being copper for wear resistance). There were 20 penny weights to the pound.
[NODS] And the "proper" pound sign, £, is derived from a stylised letter L, which in turn is taken from the abbreviation "lb" for a pound weight (short for the Latin word "librum"; connected to French equivalent "livre", both of which literally mean "book". So the unit of British is literally a silver book. =:o} ).
@@allangibson8494 [BLINKS] Well, damn... You wait 45 years for something you learned at school to ever be relevant, and when it finally comes up in conversation, turns out it's wrong! =:o/
the £ refers to pounds sterling as the currency was backed by silver at one time. so it was once related to weight. the hashtag is a hash+a tag hence 'hashtag' being called 'hex'; it has been used to denote values using hexadecimal e.g., #1F (31 decimal) so that can explain that usage.
The origin of the # for referencing groups of people goes back further than 2007, IRC channels (groups of people chatting in a publicly accessible space) are indicated with a # since the 80s, and there the channel indicator was called a hash, discord then adopted the irc syntax later for its purposes.
To add some more regional data for you: In the US (west coast), I grew up calling it the pound sign. It’s still consistently referred to it as such in things like pharmacy phone trees, when they have the ones you have to type in to still. Really cool video, will have to check out the rest of your channel. :3
there is something called hexadecimal, people often encounter this when working with colors, and call them hex values, maybe that is why it is called hex in singapore?
The German language includes: #1 Rautezeichen (Diamond sign) #2 Doppelkreuz (Double cross) #3 Gartenzaun (Garden fence) Back in school I learned the English names #4 Pound / number sign (for number pads) #5 Hashtag (for social networks) #6 Sharp (for music Notation)
9:53 I can see the origin for the name "Hex." Some systems use it to indicate the following number is in Hexidecimal (base 16). It's especially popular for the "hexcode" of identifying a specific RGB color, for example #FFFF00 indicates a bright, bold yellow (Red Value FF, Green value FF, Blue value 00). Aside from the color hexcode, it seems to be more popular in Eastern programming systems, while western systems will indicate a hexidecimal value with either the prefix '0x' or the suffix 'h'
I have also seen *$* used to indicate hexadecimal as well (though in assembly addresses in hex mostly and not much else, as an example say you want to reference memory address hex(10), then it would be something like *$000A*)
I've encountered it used as a stand in for "number of" or "count of" in certain calculations. Like you would write "# houses" to mean the "number of houses" (and use it as a number - e.g. to divide by it and get an average).
I remember one time back in high school, as my dad was taking me to school, he had me answer his phone once and do something with the automatic teller. I was confused when it told me to press the pound sign, as I was looking for the currency and had never heard that name for what I knew as the number sign.
In Spanish this symbol was always called "numeral" as far as I was aware, so when people started calling it "hashtag" unironically and outside of the context of social media I was very confused.
I'm British, in my '70s, and went to primary school in the '50s/early '60s. The short form for pound weight was always "lb". The short form for number was No (with a cocked-up - i.e. superscript 'o'). My maternal grandparents had had a grocery, and still had the scales, till, and various other items from the shop. There was no '#' symbol to be seen anywhere. The scales were labelled "lb". Shops sold things by the "lb", not by the '#'. I would therefore speculate that the '#' symbol being used for "pound weight" , or "number", is American as those usages were not encountered in normal life by people from my grandparents' (19C) age. I became involved in Computing when I went to university in 1971. This is when I encountered the '#' symbol, which was universally verbalised "hash". I went on the teach Computer Science at a Russell Group university, and the symbol was always the hash. Some students might initially call it something else, such as 'sharp', or 'pound sign', but they were soon corrected. (Since retirement I have been learning piano and guitar, and see that the sharp symbol is different from the hash symbol, so calling '#' "sharp" would be wrong. "hashtag" is a display of ignorance by computer users whose focus is on antisocial media.
I personally usually call it the number sign, but in the northeastern US, I'd say the most common name aside from hashtag is "pound sign." That's what every automated phone menu will call it.
Pretty sure 90% of people in the UK (and probably other commonwealth countries) would default to "hash", and similarly 90% of Americans would default to "pound sign" just because that's what they're referred to as on telephone keypads in those areas respectively. Though I suspect younger generations in both are skewing more towards "hashtag" these days.
In computer programming i learned that this is also called the "sha" symbol. To mark a file as a shell script, you begin it with "sha bang", which is #!, for example: #!/bin/sh #!/usr/bin/python
5:30 This is a U.S.N. Seabee rating patch : the dozer is for the Equipment Operator rating, the 3 V's show 1st Class Petty Officer ( E-6) and gold represents 12 years or more of Good Conduct. ☆
"Pound" when void of context or when referring to the telephone number pad; "Number" when it's a name of a counting or ranking field in a table; "Hash" when involving programming, except when referring to the literal character as it is used in the program's user context. "Hashtag" only when used in social media contexts where it is actually used as a tag or when speaking as if it were on social media. "Sharp" only in musical contexts or to specifically refer to the C# (or F# and similarly named) programming language(s). Edit: Adding "Hex" for color codes in HTML/CSS, but technically, I'm not even referring to the symbol. The code itself is in hexadecimal. The symbol is just part of the syntax.
I always get annoyed when I hear people call it "hashtag" because, here in Australia, it was always called a "hash" and a hashtag is the complete item of the hash and the word. Seeing that it's had so many names, I guess I can't really complain.
so I’m RIGHT for absolutely despising that one popcorn ad that asks about this. It wasn’t even originally called octothorpe! As for me, I tend to use “Pound” when dialing a phone, “Number” in math or when context necessitates, “Hashtag” all other times
In over thirty years working with telephone service, I used to enjoy finding and reading old documentation regarding standards and practices (BSPs) but I had never heard of an octothorpe! Everyone called it the pound sign. Also, knowing how Bell Labs operated, I’m sure the ‘thorpe’ has a more scientific meaning. Interesting video, thanks!
"Hash" is the name for the symbol, "hashtag" is only the name for the smybol with corresponding word(s) attached (eg #pinkshoes), as in a tag made using a hash.
9:44 Interesting it's sometimes reffered to as 'Hex', as the hash is used at the beginning of a hex code (colour code used in programming). Maybe that's where the phrase 'Hex code' comes from.
Just one point. The £ originally referred to one pound of silver, and Sterling to an alloy of 92.5% silver. So one pound sterling was a specific quantity of a specific type of metal. Doesn't "hashtag" refer to the # + the following word as a whole rather than just the #. Also, didn't they exist on IRC before Twitter came along? I would call it either the sharp sign even though strictly this ♯ is the sharp sign, or hash, depending on context.
It's called the well sign, well, by Hanji/Kanji/Hanja users anyway. It's because it looks like the character for a well where you go fetch water from, 井.
IRC also used the # for channels that were global across all of the servers on a network. That's probably where the Twitterites got it from for groups. IRC would have been using it since the late 80's to early 90's.
would've loved to hear more about the connection with the sharp sign! in Romanian we call it diez, the word that's used for a sharp note. I'd be curious to find out where the sharp sign came from (I'd imagine is not the shorthand for LB) and when did it start coming into use since musical notation is quite old, right?
"Pound" is still used pretty much exclusively in all telephony applications in the states, i.e. when an automated system is telling you to enter "your DOB as 8 digits, followed by the pound."
US slow to recognise other countries in the world exist, as usual. Not only would my DOB be wrong (DD/MM/YY), but I'd be looking for the £. It's your country, your rules but if I'm ordering something and expected to use Imperial measurements and the 12-hour clock in three different time zones, I'm hanging up the phone and ordering direct from the manufacturer in China.
It's called "hex" because in many programming languages, it is used to indicate that the following symbols denote an integer coded in hexadecimal. For example, #1F denotes 31 in the common decimal system.
in Finnish, we have seperate words for pound (weight) and pound (currency) Pauna = pound (weight) Punta = pound (currency) Interestingly enough, we also seperate between indian (native american) and indian (a person from india) Intiaani = Indian (native american) Intialainen = Indian (a person from India)
What's your favourite name for this symbol?
I call this the hashtag normally but sharp when it comes to music. I mean, I wouldn't write a piece in A hashtag.
In British medical short hand it means fracture. I don’t know how it came to mean this, but goes back to at least the 70’s. So #NOF = fractured neck of femur ( broken hip)
i call it Raute or Doppelkreuz.
yes German has other names and not as much as English
I grew up calling it "jogo da velha", which roughly translates to tic-tac-toe
Blank noughts & crosses board!
To me, the symbol changes names depending on context. For example,
-If it's on a telephone, it's a pound sign.
-If it's used in a numerical list, it's shorthand for "number."
-If it's used before a word or phrase, it's a hashtag.
-If it's used after a letter, it's pronounced "sharp" (whether it be music notation or in names for programming languages).
If I see a piece with a name 'hashtag a' then I won't be playing in 'a sharp' but in 'a' but I will also see a list of other music in the 'key of a.'
That sounds reasonable.
Incorrect. Those having worked in the telecom industry know that this is an octothorpe on a telephone keypad.
And if it's in a Chinese sentence, it's not #, it is the Chinese character 井
It represents checkmate in chess notation.
(e.g. "Nxf7#")
Re: calling # the 'hex': In the 80's a specific use case of the # sign as the "number sign" in early coding was as a prefix to a number in hexadecimal rather than decimal. When read aloud, the # would be read as "Hex" to indicate the same thing.
I was using assembly language and machine code on the 6502 processor starting in the mid 70s before I got an Apple ][ computer which used this processor. I was reading 8080 code before that, and both used # as hexadecimal. Its digits are 0123456789ABCDEF so 16 bits would store 4 digits 0000 to FFFF
#00CC00 is a color hex number that uses #
We Filipinos call it the "hash".
That can get hairy; I've seen $, & and &H all used to mark hex numbers, as well as C's 0x.
@@fnjesusfreakTrue, different programming languages (and even different assemblers) use different notation.
"we actually know who invented it ... already used for smaller groups"
so he didn't invent it, he just popularized it.
yeah i caught that too lol
Yep, it was used on Internet Relay Chat to identify chat channels starting in the early 90s. Not sure if it was used as a social identifier anywhere earlier than that, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
Invented the specific usage*
"Invented" in the same sense that Columbus "discovered" the Americas.
It was also used as linking to parts of pages in HTML syntax
At about 3 years old, my daughter started to call it “cartoon bruise”.
You aint even hit puberty yet wdym a daughter😭😭
Archie's temple. Definitely.
@@youhatennnnnnnnnndrink what is bro yapping about 🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥🔥
The one name it *_can't_* logically have is 'hashtag', because a hashtag needs the 'tag' part as well, like #Pedantry.
I always find calling it a "hashtag" to be annoying. The hashtag is the combined construct of '#' and a word; it is a word specially marked as a keyword for tagging whatever contains it. It is a tag marked with a hash, hence hashtag. But once you call the '#' itself a "hashtag" you end up with the apparently recursive definition that a hashtag (the marker) is a hashtag (the symbol) followed by a keyword.
I wanted to comment this exact thing as well. I hoped it would be brought up in the video. It can't be hashtag without the tag part of it. The # is still a hash sign even if it's used in a hashtag. I think this misnomer of calling the sign a hashtag comes from the way you pronounce a hashtag.
hashtagtag
a hashtag tags tags making hashtagtags
yeah I can live with that
Correct. In the context of a hash tag, # is a hash and #hashtag is a hash tag. A hash tag is the symbol plus the word. Not the symbol itself.
@@WilliamLindblomno thanks to Twitter popularizing that term, "hashtag." I thought it was a hash brown with a tag/tail piece, no?!
I couldn't agree more.
one German name for this sign is "Doppelkreuz" (double-cross) wich is also quite fitting and as literal as almost all other German words.
I have heard somebody call it "Lattenzaun" because it seems to resemble the look of a picket fence.
Love the sound of both of these
We do a similar thing in Hungarian but our word for it is "kettős kereszt" (dual cross).
Doppelkreuz souds very confusing to musicians, because there is a symbol in music called Doppelkreuz (Double Sharp) and looks like 𝄪 just like a x and means the same as two sharps. and the single sharp (Kreuz) ♯ looks like the Hashtag.
It’s called „Raute“(rhombus) in telephone tech.
I'm a musician (not professionally) so to me it's "sharp". But in my profession it's used to mean "quantity" so I should call it "number".
It isn’t a sharp, a sharp sign has two strictly vertical lines and two diagonal horizontal lines, whereas the octothorpe is the other way around.
@@TheModicaLiszt But that association led to the language name C# pronounced "C-sharp" nevertheless.
In unicode, they are definitely different code points: U+0023 "NUMBER SIGN" and U+266F "MUSIC SHARP SIGN".
@@MattMcIrvin Fun "fact": C# is secretly C++. Take C++, make the two plus signs diagonally adjacent, extend the lines until they cross, and it becomes C#.
@@vibaj16 wouldnt that be C++++ ? :P
@@WacKEDmaN no, still only two plusses
The telephone instruction voice person taught my USA generation to press the "pound sign".
And in my English speaking, not-USA country the telephone always called it "hash". It always irked me as a child/teenager the way the yanks always called it "pound". (It kinda still does, but these days I realise how unreasonable that feeling really is)
His name is Mr. Pound and every evening he takes Mrs. Pound home to Poundtown. #Poundtown
In Canada it was also referred to as pound in automated telephone menus.
I'm Canadian and it's also called "pound" when used on the phone.
Telephone companies in my country usually call this symbol "tic tac toe", "square" or "hashtag".
I'm surprised no one said "tic tac toe" yet.
9:45 My best guess would be hexadecimal notation? We use hexadecimal notation for colors, and I believe we put a # before to represent it. So it wouldn't be surprising for some people to call it hex, if it represents an hex number.
As a millennial Australian I’ve always known it as hash, in my experience a lot of message banks on phones say “to end your message press the hash key or just hang up”
Here in america they say "press the pound key"
2nd this. It's been called hash since forever.
In medicine it is used as an abbreviation of fracture. A “#NOF” is fractured neck of femur or “broken hip”
In Brazil, before the rise of Twitter, the most common name for the telephone # key certainly was "jogo-da-velha". Jogo da velha is the Brazilian Portuguese name for tic-tac-toe, but literaly translates to "old woman's game".
I guess that key was pretty much only seen in telephones and # has never had a wide spread use with the meaning of "number" in the Portuguese language.
Here in Chile it's sometimes called "gato" for the same game
Before social media, there was IRC and # was used for the channels
I always assumed that the IRC channel use is what led to its use for hashtags. (@ mentions being another IRC convention)
i also heard it was used for directorys on the web? like #google or #search engine ti make seraching the net eaiser, or hash TAGs for things, i wonder this is why now when serach the internet its ofton garbage adn more garbage? that all these #freeadvertisingformultibilliondollarcorperations is screwing it up?
@@mifffalden9225 @ on IRC means the person is a channel operator, i.e. they can kick or ban other people from the channel.
Literally just read on Wikipedia. Weird this video did not mention how IRC inspired the usage on Twitter.
He doesn't mention programming languages as well.
I'm German and I always have known of this symbol as a "Raute"
For the non-German speakers: That's rhombus in English, probably based on the shape in the middle of the symbol.
I know it as "Lattenzaun" (picket fence).
Doppelkreuz
Same
I am from Hong Kong. We called the symbol # as 「井」here which originally means "a well".
We literally have a character in Cantonese which is exactly the same with this symbol lol.
In korea as well we call 井 for #
1:22 The % sign was also used to denote "c/o", as in "care of", in mailing addresses, back when typewriters were commonplace.
Ex.:
NAME
% OTHER NAME
173 SOMEWHERE PLACE
NOWHERE, LB 10000
Hashtag isn't the symbol, it's the kind of tag, which includes the hash symbol at the beginning. When we read "hashtag winning" from #winning, we are not reading the symbol as the word "hashtag", we are labeling the whole thing as a "hashtag" (which is a tag labeled with the hash symbol) and then providing the word or phrase it includes as a tag
hashtag can be a name for the symbol. people on roblox get messages censored/"tagged" using #s, also called "tags"
Hex is probably related to “hex color code”, like #F00 and #FF0000 for red
I called it a "Hex" sign ever since i was a kid, before the Internet was a thing, and before most people even had computers at home, so it's not because of the colour codes.
I'm more inclined to believe that it's due to older generation of Singaporeans/M'sians (who weren't particularly good at speaking/hearing English) mishearing or mispronouncing the word "hash" and saying "hex" instead, and then teaching the next generation that it's "hex".
Hex is short for hexadecimal.
If that were the case, it would’ve been related to hexadecimal rather than the colour code
@@jackthehacker05 Was that for me? Colour codes are hexadecimal (although they can also be specified in RGB and other value systems)
@@garyperkins3304 no, TH-cam just sucks with knowing who to send notifications to, my bad
I'm 67. It was number when I grew up. Later I knew it as pound; which was referred that way for digital phone dialing , etc.
I find it interesting that the programming language "C#" is called "C sharp" although other names for "#" are way more popular in the domain of programming
That is because, The C language was named as the letter after B, there was previously a B programming language.
The C++ language followed, and that referred to the increment operator in C so C+1
C# was named as the note in the musical scale after C.
basically a pun
It's still the pound sign to me. I know hashtag is probably more common now, but I still hear it as "pound" on phone menus. I don't think I've ever called a number and gone through a menu where it told me to push "hashtag" to choose a specific option.
'Hashtag' is literally an internet creation - a tag that is denoted by the hash symbol. It's still called a hash in the UK but as US keyboards don't have use for the £ symbol, it was allocated to # with the same ASCII code. So # became "Pound" and it's stuck in general use. Modern keyboards have different layouts so it's no longer the case though.
If I'm talking about the symbol itself, I call it "number sign". If it's denoting a tag in a social media post, I call it "hashtag". If it's in code (e.g., #include ), I call it "hash".
@7:01, this goes a little farther back. # is used in HTML to link to different places on a page rather then different pages.
So if Jim Thorpe had four robot arms he'd be Octothorpe?
Doc. Oct or General Grevious
If he will also have two heads
8:34 Around 1988 an issue of Games Magazine had a fake ad for the * and # buttons on a phone (They're not used for anything yet, but in the near future they will let you override a busy signal)
In dutch the most common name (at least after hastag) is "hekje" literally small fence.
"... en sluit af, met een hekje"
TIL: # sounds like heck yeah in Dutch.
Hek is related to English hatch!
I grew up calling this POUND.
Now you know you were right! As a Brit, I always wondered why # was called the 'pound sign' instead of £. I thought it was just because US keyboards lacked a £ key!
There's an old Simpsons episode in which Troy McClure (RIP) refers to this symbol on a landline phone as "the pound sign" which always confused me... until now.
Same... I feel old now... 😅
Too many things in English use the word "Pound". Let's drop one of them, I vote this and suggest simply Hashtag.
@@chrisrj9871 If we need to drop one thing called pound then either the UK could join the eurozone or the US could start using kilos. 💶
The sharp symbol in music originally had the turned form shown at 5:41. Now the horizontals of the modern ♯ are both thicker and angled, so they can stand out against staff lines.
Over here in America I have NEVER heard Octothorpe in my LIFE. Autocorrect doesn’t like the word either, keeps putting a red line under it lol
Checked on my tablet - doesn't get recommended for quick entry, but doesn't get red-lined as a misspelling.
If you had worked in the telecom industry then you would know this as an octothorpe on a telephone keypad.
I often have to correct spellcheckers.
I've heard of octothorpe, but only because I'm a Unix-head.
I had many family members who worked for "Ma Bell". To THEM it WAS an "octothorpe", To everyone else "pound" (for phone use), Otherwise, "number sign".
You used to see it on the cast list at the end of US TV shows to identify who played unnamed characters, e.g. Policeman #1 John Smith, Polioceman #2 Fred Bloggs.
I've never heard the name octothrope before, that's probably a British exclusive thing.
I've seen it a lot used to replace the word number, but never in well written text. It's usually used in forms or informative text where space is limited. It's usually paired with a descriptive name like: Phone #, Account #, ID #.
In american english it's usually called pound when paired with a string of numbers and hashtag on social media.
Those having worked in the telecom industry in North America know this as an octothorpe on a telephone keypad.
@LouisStreet that can be an insider thing, because those automated answering machines call it pound, which I assume should be a nationwide standard (because all of them use it, not just some).
"Octothorpe" was coined in America; Bell was exclusively American. From other comments, I get the feeling the name was taken very seriously inside the (vast) Bell organization, but not so much outside it.
Hex, I would guess comes from hexadecimal. E.g. in CSS you specify colors as #
You could also specify 1 digit hex values as well for each field. For example, #333 is short for #333333. You just double up the digits to get the full hex value. #RGB becomes #RRGGBB, which is convenient for roughing out a palette when you don't have to worry about colors too much yet because they're way easier to parse mentally.
Outside of the WWW, it's rare for # to mean hexadecimal. In the 80s, it was far more common to use $ for hex, though other symbols were used too. Some languages got a bit annoying as, having used $ for hexadecimal for years, they decided they needed a symbol for decimal and chose # -- dollar for hex, hash for decimal. ;)
2:46 Perhaps in some contexts, but the symbol for pound weight was much more often written lb or lbs (with or without a dot). For example 2 lb or 2 lbs. But not 2#.
7bit Ascii didn't have the £ symbol, so the UK started to use the # for the Pound sterling. Writing scripts for importing data was extra tricky at times.
I would be more than happy to say "octothorpe sorry not sorry”
Also, imo it doesn't make sense to call # a hashtag. #something is a hashtag, but # is just a hash.
you could say both are tags, using two meanings of "tag" in this context. In "#something", "#" is a tag (extra piece of information that the software uses) that means that "something" is a tag (word to help searching for particular phrases in posts)
I never knew that the symbol had such a colorful story. Now, that's amazing!
I always used to call it the "number sign" because when I was a kid, that was the only context in which I saw it used, to indicate a number in a sequence. "Pound sign" baffled me because, while I heard it called that, it wasn't used to indicate pounds-weight in the 1970s-80s US; that was always "lb." and of course we didn't use pounds sterling.
"Hash mark" had some currency as well, and "hashtag" is an obvious coinage from there but it still sounds strange for me to hear "hashtag" used *outside* of a social-media context.
the "hex" name could come from it being used to signify hexadecimal color codes, sometimes called hex codes for short
...and other hexadecimal numbers, in various computing contexts, yes.
In graduate school around 24-25 years ago, I was getting a master's degree in computer information systems. We had students from several countries and occasionally this symbol came up because of confusion. My classmates from the UK, called it hash and those from the US called it the pound symbol. Ultimately we settled on calling it hash or octothorpe.
I would love to see you do the poem "Waka Waka Bang Splat" that is beloved by us old geeks!
A couple of years ago, I (in my 20's) had a prof (in her 30's) call it a hashtag when I used it for the number meaning. An older student (late 40's) mentioned it means number too. I have heard it as a pound, number, hashtag, and sharp sign.
Technically a musical sharp (♯) slants the opposite direction from a #
Good point. Though many places use # as an alternative because it exists on keyboard
In Portugal, we call it "cardinal" (read the same as in English).
I had heard of and used all of the meanings except "octothorpe" which was completely new to me, thx
gonna start calling "?" the "Guantanamo" as an abstraction of the name "interrogation point"
Sounds reasonable 👍
I think it is incorrect to state that the name "pound sign" is not used very much anymore. It's used by both construction workers who use it as a shorthand for pounds, and also by telephone operators who instruct people to press the pound key. That's the name I would label it generally, and from its history of being originally used for the pound by weight, it seems the most accurate name for it. As another commenter said, however, its name should vary based on its usage. It's a different but identical symbol whether it's used in music, numerical lists, internet key phrases, or on a telephone.
in brazil, some older people call it "jogo da velha", which is literally just "tic tac toe"
[#] (read as "hash") is the second extended play by South Korean girl group Loona. It was released on February 5, 2020, by Blockberry Creative and distributed by Kakao M.
The Pound as currency was originally literally a pound weight of sterling silver…
(92.5% Silver with the balance usually being copper for wear resistance). There were 20 penny weights to the pound.
[NODS] And the "proper" pound sign, £, is derived from a stylised letter L, which in turn is taken from the abbreviation "lb" for a pound weight (short for the Latin word "librum"; connected to French equivalent "livre", both of which literally mean "book". So the unit of British is literally a silver book. =:o} ).
@@therealpbristow The “Lb” is for Libra not Librum. “Libra” was Latin for pound or balance and derived from the Babylonian “Zibanu”.
@@allangibson8494 [BLINKS] Well, damn... You wait 45 years for something you learned at school to ever be relevant, and when it finally comes up in conversation, turns out it's wrong! =:o/
the £ refers to pounds sterling as the currency was backed by silver at one time. so it was once related to weight.
the hashtag is a hash+a tag hence 'hashtag'
being called 'hex'; it has been used to denote values using hexadecimal e.g., #1F (31 decimal) so that can explain that usage.
The origin of the # for referencing groups of people goes back further than 2007, IRC channels (groups of people chatting in a publicly accessible space) are indicated with a # since the 80s, and there the channel indicator was called a hash, discord then adopted the irc syntax later for its purposes.
To add some more regional data for you: In the US (west coast), I grew up calling it the pound sign. It’s still consistently referred to it as such in things like pharmacy phone trees, when they have the ones you have to type in to still.
Really cool video, will have to check out the rest of your channel. :3
i call it "tic tac toe"
there is something called hexadecimal, people often encounter this when working with colors, and call them hex values, maybe that is why it is called hex in singapore?
In Switzerland we call it "Gartenhag" (garden fence).
The German language includes:
#1 Rautezeichen (Diamond sign)
#2 Doppelkreuz (Double cross)
#3 Gartenzaun (Garden fence)
Back in school I learned the English names
#4 Pound / number sign (for number pads)
#5 Hashtag (for social networks)
#6 Sharp (for music Notation)
9:53 I can see the origin for the name "Hex." Some systems use it to indicate the following number is in Hexidecimal (base 16). It's especially popular for the "hexcode" of identifying a specific RGB color, for example #FFFF00 indicates a bright, bold yellow (Red Value FF, Green value FF, Blue value 00).
Aside from the color hexcode, it seems to be more popular in Eastern programming systems, while western systems will indicate a hexidecimal value with either the prefix '0x' or the suffix 'h'
I have also seen *$* used to indicate hexadecimal as well (though in assembly addresses in hex mostly and not much else, as an example say you want to reference memory address hex(10), then it would be something like *$000A*)
I've encountered it used as a stand in for "number of" or "count of" in certain calculations. Like you would write "# houses" to mean the "number of houses" (and use it as a number - e.g. to divide by it and get an average).
When I want to shorten something like "number of houses" I stick with # just meaning "number", so I write "# of houses"
I remember one time back in high school, as my dad was taking me to school, he had me answer his phone once and do something with the automatic teller.
I was confused when it told me to press the pound sign, as I was looking for the currency and had never heard that name for what I knew as the number sign.
So many names to one symbol that also has a slight variation
I like "hash" because it's the shortest and most violent
"hex" is shorter, but definitely one of the worse names due to not being very exclusive to that symbol.
Me too, but also cos it makes me think of fried potato. =:o}
In Spanish this symbol was always called "numeral" as far as I was aware, so when people started calling it "hashtag" unironically and outside of the context of social media I was very confused.
I'm British, in my '70s, and went to primary school in the '50s/early '60s. The short form for pound weight was always "lb". The short form for number was No (with a cocked-up - i.e. superscript 'o'). My maternal grandparents had had a grocery, and still had the scales, till, and various other items from the shop. There was no '#' symbol to be seen anywhere. The scales were labelled "lb". Shops sold things by the "lb", not by the '#'.
I would therefore speculate that the '#' symbol being used for "pound weight" , or "number", is American as those usages were not encountered in normal life by people from my grandparents' (19C) age.
I became involved in Computing when I went to university in 1971. This is when I encountered the '#' symbol, which was universally verbalised "hash". I went on the teach Computer Science at a Russell Group university, and the symbol was always the hash. Some students might initially call it something else, such as 'sharp', or 'pound sign', but they were soon corrected. (Since retirement I have been learning piano and guitar, and see that the sharp symbol is different from the hash symbol, so calling '#' "sharp" would be wrong.
"hashtag" is a display of ignorance by computer users whose focus is on antisocial media.
I personally usually call it the number sign, but in the northeastern US, I'd say the most common name aside from hashtag is "pound sign." That's what every automated phone menu will call it.
Pretty sure 90% of people in the UK (and probably other commonwealth countries) would default to "hash", and similarly 90% of Americans would default to "pound sign" just because that's what they're referred to as on telephone keypads in those areas respectively. Though I suspect younger generations in both are skewing more towards "hashtag" these days.
In computer programming i learned that this is also called the "sha" symbol. To mark a file as a shell script, you begin it with "sha bang", which is #!, for example:
#!/bin/sh
#!/usr/bin/python
4:04 it doesn't help that # was (and is) used instead of £ to mark prices in handwritten tags, like at the greengrocer's.
5:30 This is a U.S.N. Seabee rating patch : the dozer is for the Equipment Operator rating, the 3 V's show 1st Class Petty Officer ( E-6) and gold represents 12 years or more of Good Conduct. ☆
In Hebrew we say "Soolameet" for Octothorpe, literally meaning "little ladder"
"Pound" when void of context or when referring to the telephone number pad;
"Number" when it's a name of a counting or ranking field in a table;
"Hash" when involving programming, except when referring to the literal character as it is used in the program's user context.
"Hashtag" only when used in social media contexts where it is actually used as a tag or when speaking as if it were on social media.
"Sharp" only in musical contexts or to specifically refer to the C# (or F# and similarly named) programming language(s).
Edit: Adding "Hex" for color codes in HTML/CSS, but technically, I'm not even referring to the symbol. The code itself is in hexadecimal. The symbol is just part of the syntax.
I always get annoyed when I hear people call it "hashtag" because, here in Australia, it was always called a "hash" and a hashtag is the complete item of the hash and the word. Seeing that it's had so many names, I guess I can't really complain.
And people have never said ATM machine?
@@zigzaggreg In the UK we dodged that bullet by just calling them "cash machine", "money robot", "whole in the wall".
so I’m RIGHT for absolutely despising that one popcorn ad that asks about this. It wasn’t even originally called octothorpe!
As for me, I tend to use “Pound” when dialing a phone, “Number” in math or when context necessitates, “Hashtag” all other times
In over thirty years working with telephone service, I used to enjoy finding and reading old documentation regarding standards and practices (BSPs) but I had never heard of an octothorpe! Everyone called it the pound sign. Also, knowing how Bell Labs operated, I’m sure the ‘thorpe’ has a more scientific meaning. Interesting video, thanks!
Ah, finally a video on my favorite symbol, the sticknugget.
Oh, I *love* that! =:oD
Still used in archery for bow poundage.
In medicine we use it to mean fracture. Eg right arm #. Or left leg #. Etc.
"Hash" is the name for the symbol, "hashtag" is only the name for the smybol with corresponding word(s) attached (eg #pinkshoes), as in a tag made using a hash.
9:44 Interesting it's sometimes reffered to as 'Hex', as the hash is used at the beginning of a hex code (colour code used in programming). Maybe that's where the phrase 'Hex code' comes from.
The story of how it went from LB to # parallels how certain infamous comic panels became
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|| |_
Fascinating.
A guy from Poland here: I grew up hearing that this symbol is called "krzyżyk" (cross) and "hasz" (hash).
finnish call it twig fence or risu aita. it looks a lot like farm yard fence hence the name.
In danish it is sometims called “havelåge” = garden gate
For the sake of accuracy, it's risuaita.
Octothorpe 🐙
Yeah, that sounds like the name of a gigantic craken -like monster.
@@sohopedeco A very polite, and very British, kraken.
"Hope you don't mind me destroying your ship, old chap."
In telecommunications # is also called “gate”
In the US its still very common to hear "pound sign", but only in the context of like phone call menus.
Just one point. The £ originally referred to one pound of silver, and Sterling to an alloy of 92.5% silver. So one pound sterling was a specific quantity of a specific type of metal.
Doesn't "hashtag" refer to the # + the following word as a whole rather than just the #. Also, didn't they exist on IRC before Twitter came along?
I would call it either the sharp sign even though strictly this ♯ is the sharp sign, or hash, depending on context.
It's called the well sign, well, by Hanji/Kanji/Hanja users anyway. It's because it looks like the character for a well where you go fetch water from, 井.
# is really giving main character vibes, he is The Chosen One
IRC also used the # for channels that were global across all of the servers on a network. That's probably where the Twitterites got it from for groups. IRC would have been using it since the late 80's to early 90's.
would've loved to hear more about the connection with the sharp sign! in Romanian we call it diez, the word that's used for a sharp note. I'd be curious to find out where the sharp sign came from (I'd imagine is not the shorthand for LB) and when did it start coming into use since musical notation is quite old, right?
People who complain about stepping on a lego have clearly never stepped on an octothorp.
In Hong Kong: well sign (井號). Just because the thing looks like the Chinese word for a well
In Hungary it is traditionally called “dual cross” which i always found weird growing up, as it is more like four crosses
"Pound" is still used pretty much exclusively in all telephony applications in the states, i.e. when an automated system is telling you to enter "your DOB as 8 digits, followed by the pound."
US slow to recognise other countries in the world exist, as usual. Not only would my DOB be wrong (DD/MM/YY), but I'd be looking for the £. It's your country, your rules but if I'm ordering something and expected to use Imperial measurements and the 12-hour clock in three different time zones, I'm hanging up the phone and ordering direct from the manufacturer in China.
@@avaggdu1 random rant but go off I guess...
what if peaople got punded for using hastags stupidly?
@@dancoroian1 Thats not a rant, its a joke. And a very funny one at that.
(Two nations divided by a common language....)
It's called "hex" because in many programming languages, it is used to indicate that the following symbols denote an integer coded in hexadecimal. For example, #1F denotes 31 in the common decimal system.
You could call it an ID Mark as well since they're also used for html IDs
I've heard of Hex for it in Aotearoa
in Finnish, we have seperate words for pound (weight) and pound (currency)
Pauna = pound (weight)
Punta = pound (currency)
Interestingly enough, we also seperate between indian (native american) and indian (a person from india)
Intiaani = Indian (native american)
Intialainen = Indian (a person from India)
It is kind of ironic that English speakers deal with indians and pounds more often but don't have seperate words for them
Way more interesting then the number sigh
Was finally figuring out why pound is abbreviated to Lb
You should do a video on why the letter A is actually upside down. Specifically capital A. Lowercase a is just tilted to the side.
In the Netherlands we mostly refer to it as "fence" and "number", love the video