2 ms·

Hash is extremely contemporary, newer than number, and still a nickname. Pound is older, but it's true proper name is octothorpe.

skissane 4y ago
Outside of North America, hash has been the standard term for many decades; in that time period, the name pound was rarely used for it outside of the US. Number sign was adopted in international standards as a neutral compromise between US and UK usage; apparently, it is/was also the standard term in Canada, and saw regional usage in some northern parts of the US. I wonder whether the derived term hashtag is causing hash to make inroads into US usage? Octothorpe has never been its “proper” name in any country; just a jocular nickname originating in the US telco industry, which spread from there to computing.
- Maursault 4y ago
  > Octothorpe has never been its “proper” name in any country; just a jocular nickname originating in the US telco industry, which spread from there to computing. Octothope was coined by Bell Labs. It is certainly not jocular (what?). In point of fact, it is that symbol's proper name and how it is referred to in all Bell manuals and documentation, and this word coinage is little to no different to how the British began using # for pound to distinguish it from £, the currency. Even though "hash," by hundreds of years, predates all other names for the symbol (originally, "hatch," marks one would make with a hatchet), hashing, the mathematical practice since the 1940's of transformation of a string of characters into a usually shorter fixed-length value or key that represents the original string, was not married in identity or meaning or abbreviation to the # symbol by convention until probably 1990, regardless of location on the planet or country not in North America. No one anywhere in the universe was using the hash symbol in, say, 1975, to refer to the mathematical hashing in computer science. In 1975, the # was the octothrope properly and most commonly (even if no one used that term, they all had a telephone and they still do, and every telephone today still has an octothorpe button, i.e. not a hash button), or the number sign or the pound sign by popularity. # was never used as an abbreviation for mathematical hashing, again, until maybe late 1980's, probably like about 1991 # became conventionally used by programmers, computer scientists and mathematicians to mean mathematical hash. And even today, every county in the world that has telephones properly has an octothorpe key, not a hash or pound key. Bell coined the term and established it's usage long, long before # was used for math hashes, and even to this day, the octothorpe symbol is likely more common than the hash symbol, just because there are so many damn phones.

skissane 4y ago

Outside of North America, hash has been the standard term for many decades; in that time period, the name pound was rarely used for it outside of the US. Number sign was adopted in international standards as a neutral compromise between US and UK usage; apparently, it is/was also the standard term in Canada, and saw regional usage in some northern parts of the US. I wonder whether the derived term hashtag is causing hash to make inroads into US usage? Octothorpe has never been its “proper” name in any country; just a jocular nickname originating in the US telco industry, which spread from there to computing.

Maursault 4y ago
> Octothorpe has never been its “proper” name in any country; just a jocular nickname originating in the US telco industry, which spread from there to computing. Octothope was coined by Bell Labs. It is certainly not jocular (what?). In point of fact, it is that symbol's proper name and how it is referred to in all Bell manuals and documentation, and this word coinage is little to no different to how the British began using # for pound to distinguish it from £, the currency. Even though "hash," by hundreds of years, predates all other names for the symbol (originally, "hatch," marks one would make with a hatchet), hashing, the mathematical practice since the 1940's of transformation of a string of characters into a usually shorter fixed-length value or key that represents the original string, was not married in identity or meaning or abbreviation to the # symbol by convention until probably 1990, regardless of location on the planet or country not in North America. No one anywhere in the universe was using the hash symbol in, say, 1975, to refer to the mathematical hashing in computer science. In 1975, the # was the octothrope properly and most commonly (even if no one used that term, they all had a telephone and they still do, and every telephone today still has an octothorpe button, i.e. not a hash button), or the number sign or the pound sign by popularity. # was never used as an abbreviation for mathematical hashing, again, until maybe late 1980's, probably like about 1991 # became conventionally used by programmers, computer scientists and mathematicians to mean mathematical hash. And even today, every county in the world that has telephones properly has an octothorpe key, not a hash or pound key. Bell coined the term and established it's usage long, long before # was used for math hashes, and even to this day, the octothorpe symbol is likely more common than the hash symbol, just because there are so many damn phones.