The ‘at symbol’ is known as arroba in Spanish. Do you know the reason behind this? Do you know why the ‘at sign/symbol’ is known as arroba in Spanish? If no, you will find answer to this question in this post. Here, I’ve explained in detail why the at sign is called arroba in Spanish.
Why is the ‘at symbol/sign’ called arroba in Spanish?
In order to find the answer to this question, we need to delve deeper into the origin of the term arroba. Let us check it out –
Origin of the word arroba
The word arroba was used by Spanish and Portuguese speakers in the past. They used arroba as a unit of measurement. They used the unit of arroba to measure weight as well as volume. It is said that the Spanish and Portuguese speakers borrowed the word arroba from Arabic (the Arabic term is ar-rub).
Spanish and Portuguese traders would use the unit arroba regularly. Thus, they used the @ symbol to denote the weight and volume of commodities. Gradually, they even started using the at symbol to denote the quantity of commodities. The @ sign was regularly used to denote the quantity of a commodity during invoicing and trading.
Due to the above mentioned factors, the @ symbol (at symbol) is called arroba in Spanish. As of now, it is commonly used in social media, emails, programming languages & numerous other places.
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