The name of the @

[ba...@fermat.math.mcgill.ca]

After following the discussion for three weeks, I have finally received
permission from the crosstime police to reveal the name of the @:
appersat. The explanation is a bit lengthy.

I begin with the &, also known as the ampersand. This arose as follows.
It seems that generations of British schoolchildren learned the alphabet
by reciting in unison
A per se Aye
B per se Bee
\cdots
Z per se Zed
& per se And
I think that among the reasons are that the simple ABC rhyme learned
throughout the US was hopeless, since the last line couldn't be made to
rhyme. They would have had to change the name of the 'v' to 'ved' and
they were evidently unwilling. The meaning of these lines was,
according to my dictionary,
A by itself [is] Aye
B by itself [is] Bee
\cdots
& by itself [is] And
Why it was necessary to say all this, I cannot say. And in the fullness
of time these chants lost whatever vestige of meaning they may have had
and the last one changed, according to standard phonetic laws, to
ampersand. At that we are fortunate that the others didn't or we might
be saying
Apersaye, Beepersbee, Seepersee, \ldots, instead of A, B, C, \ldots.

Now it so happened that in the year 1066, there was a split in the
universe caused by a certain photon that was spin down in our universe
was spin up in the other. It also happened that this photon
interacted with a certain arrow shot into the air during the battle of
Hastings. In our universe the arrow went through King Harold's eye and
killed him, thus allowing William of Normandy to prevail. In the
alternate universe, the arrow deflected slightly and hit Harold in the
nose. As a result he recovered from the wound and, known henceforth as
Harold Fletchnose, he went on to rule his Anglo-Saxon subjects for many
uneventful decades. (William returned to Normandy, where he became
immensely wealthy by cornering the local market on Calvados (apple
jack). His son, also named William, moved on to Alsace where he did
the same for pear eau-de-vie.)

Meantime, England, now a country speaking not English, but late
Anglo-Saxon, was even more a nation of shopkeepers than now. Instead of
adding the & as the 27th letter of the alphabet, they added the @,
much more useful in business. The same generations of English
schoolchildren, recited the alphabet, ending in
@ per se at
which, in the fullness of time, modified itself phonetically to
appersat.