The modest and often overlooked symbol: the ampersand. Its universal utility is quick to be taken for granted due to its small stature and almost ubiquitous presence. However, it serves a very noble cause – it saves us the effort of typing “and.” To those of you who may not know, the actual name for the “&” symbol is “the ampersand.” It’s not a word often spoken in day-to-day conversation, but its use is almost ubiquitous. In fact, it has been for hundreds of years.
The earliest record of the ampersand dates back to the Roman Empire in Pompeii. It was first discovered in the many walls of anonymous graffiti littering the noble city’s streets. The symbol functioned as a ligature, a combination of two letters to form a single character, of “e” and “t” to form the Latin word for “and.” You can still see “et” present in the current configuration of the ampersand: the tall front part acts as the “e” and curves down to create a “t” with the long tail at the bottom. Depending on the font used, this aspect of its design may be more or less exaggerated. 

After the Roman Empire as we know it died, the common use of the ampersand died with it. It wouldn’t make a return until the Renaissance revived widespread study of the classics. Due to the new explosion of Roman studies, scribes who wanted to emulate the grandeur of the empire adopted the symbol in their writing. The use of the ampersand was confined to the Italian Renaissance for the majority of the symbol’s life, until once again, it died off. It would be another two hundred years or so before a second revival, this time in Germany.

Germany also adopted the ampersand from the Romans, but in a different way. While the Italians adopted it due to the colloquial use found in graffiti, the Germans derived it from Cicero’s assistant, Marcus Tullius Tiro. Tiro was a servant for the great Roman orator Cicero and a significant portion of his work was dedicated to writing. He devised his own form of shorthand dubbed Tironian notes to streamline his work, which consists of thousands of symbols to represent different Latin phrases or words. A part of that shorthand was a symbol for “et”; however, it was shaped like a “7” instead. Tiro’s form of the ampersand became incredibly popular in Germany through the 19th century, but died by the turn of the century.

Meanwhile, in 1835 in England, the ampersand found a bizarre new life as the 27th letter of the alphabet after the letter “z.” It continued to act as it was originally intended to, but was just now a letter instead of a ligature. This quasi-letter was what the current name was derived from. English in the 1800s referred to singular letters that acted as words like “a” and “I” by the phrase “___ per se ___” meaning “ ____ by itself ____” in order to differentiate the word from the letter. So, when referring to “&,” it was pronounced “and per se and” until it eventually morphed into ampersand. Much like the “7,” the ampersand ceased to exist as a letter by the end of the 19th century.

But, as you can probably tell by the existence of this article, the ampersand continues to be used. It has become key in many aspects of our lives, be it naming companies or using it in computer programming. It’s unfortunate that such a useful symbol has had to face a tumultuous history, but luckily, it won’t die out anytime soon. 

Information retrieved from Britannica.com, Merriam-Webster.com, and Translationdirectory.com.