The term “hashtag” sounds so old-fashioned, and so far removed from the language of social networking, that by now “hashtag” is often used in Italian to refer to the ubiquitous “#.” But of the hashtag, the hash mark, or hash symbol/key in English, is really only one part.
While in Italian the # has only one name, a somewhat obsolete one at that, in English the list of names by which this grid-shaped symbol is called is very long. Equally numerous are also the functions it has taken on over the centuries in the Anglo-Saxon world and only later in the rest of the world. The British call it a hash symbol (from crosshatch, the cross-segmented hatching), the Americans number sign or pound sign, but the technical term would be octothorpe, to which are then added a whole series of unofficial names referring to its shape, such as square, grid, fence, crunch…
The history of the names by which the gate has been defined is also the history of the meanings it has taken on from time to time. The first of these is surely “pound sign.”
A unit of measurement
The pound sign did not originate with social networks, or even with the telephone. Once again the origin is to be found in Latin.
It is impossible to determine which is the first instance in which the symbol appeared as we know it today, but it is known to derive from the Latin term libra pondo, or “weight in pounds” (pound in English is said pound, which derives precisely from pondo, peso), abbreviated to lb since the 1300s. In transcribing the abbreviation, the English added a hyphen to symbolize a contraction. By the 1600s printers had begun producing movable type specifically for this glyph.
The evolution of the lb symbol into the gate as we know it today probably lies in handwriting. Although it is not clear when the present conformation became established as official, it seems that, sketched out faster and faster, lb morphed into #.
Hence the name, as well as the use as a unit of measurement, of pound sign. From this function also springs another American custom, namely that of using # as the equivalent of “number,” number sign, still common today as the equivalent of the abbreviation “No.” or “№.”
An obscure key (and name)
Although unknown to the majority of the population, and still sparsely used, the technical term for # in English is octothorpe. Where does such an absurd and difficult-to-pronounce word come from?
It is the 1960s in the offices of Bell Laboratories, the still famous telecommunications company that produced the first telephones. Researchers are modifying the telephone keypad so as to add more functions. Two new keys are added on either side of the zero to which symbols must be assigned. After some research and trial and error, the choice falls on the asterisk and the hash mark, which belong to the ASCII convention and are already familiar to many users. It therefore becomes necessary to assign a name to the symbols, especially to the #, which, called in America pound sign, could be confused with the symbol of the English currency, also called pound. Thus it is constructed at the table from the word octothorpe, consisting of the prefix octo- to indicate the eight points of the symbol and a second term whose origin is less clear and which has given rise to a number of anecdotes. The most widely accepted theory is that it derives from Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe, who had his medals awarded to him withdrawn for playing as a professional basketball player. In fact, it seems that the employee who chose the name was a fan of his.
The hash mark on the telephone keypad was intended to give some specific commands, but, somewhat like the name octothorpe, it remained largely unused by the average user. Although lacking any real meaning of its own, the hashtag became familiar to the general public.
Fame
Giving the # a real role is Chris Messina, recognized as the inventor of the hashtag
Chris Messina, an expert in social networking and digital modes of interaction, suggests Twitter adopt hashtags to group, categorize and index discussions through the use of a word preceded by a #. Actually, hashtags already existed then, and first appeared on the Internet in Internet Relay Chat (IRC), a network where users could communicate within channels, identified by a hashtag that determined their topic. It was within this community that the name hashtag was coined.
Messina’s proposal was initially not enthusiastically received by Twitter’s founders, who considered it too “nerdy” an interaction. However, hashtags began to circulate within Twitter and grow in popularity. In 2008, during his election campaign Obama launched a hashtag #askobama. The following year, Twitter responded, and implemented a hyperlink function in hashtags, so that tweets making use of a specific hashtag could be searched for. At this point the use of hashtags by users explodes over the next three years, also landing on Youtube, Tumblr, Linkedin, Instagram and Facebook.
Needless to say, hashtags create a completely new mode of communication, especially in the area of marketing.
Similarly to what happened with other symbols [link article on the @], with the birth of hashtags the # is resurrected and becomes an ultra-recognizable and meaningful sign for the general public. As with the @, the choice of the # for Messina was due to a desire to use a symbol that was already out there, rather than invent something new, which would have undermined understandability and chances of being adopted.
Surrounded by ever-increasingly fast-moving technology that is constantly changing the ways we interact and our behaviors, who knows what other glyphs left to gather dust on our keyboards before our eyes will come back to life and become part of our everyday life
Sources: Keith Houston. “Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks” (2013).