octothorpe, noun = # The literal meaning of this word is “eight fields”: thorpe comes from the Old Norse for village, farm or hamlet, and octo means eight. In cartography it’s used as a symbol for villages: eight fields around a central square. Other names for this symbol include hash, numeral sign, number sign, pound sign and crosshatch.
There’s more information and the names of this symbol in various other languages on Wikipedia
interrobang, noun = ‽ – a little-used symbol that combines the question mark and exclamation mark.
These words came up yesterday on Word of Mouth, BBC Radio 4’s programme about words and language, when they discussed some of the unusual names for symbols like #, @, & and !. Other names they mentioned included screamer or bang for the exclamation mark (!), monkey’s tail, snail or elephant (in languages other than English) for the @ sign, bithorpe for the hyphen (-) and quadrothorpe for the equals sign (=).
You can listen to Word of Mouth on the BBC website
Do you have any interesting/poetic names for these or other symbols?
