The Octothorpe: The # Symbol's Secret Name

You've typed it thousands of times. You've called it a hashtag, a pound sign, maybe a number symbol. But did you know that # has an official name that sounds like a Victorian medical condition? Meet the octothorpe.

This delightfully weird name was coined in the 1960s by Bell Labs engineers working on touch-tone telephones. When they needed a name for the # key, they got creative. The "octo" part makes sense—eight points around the edges. But "thorpe"? That's where things get wonderfully arbitrary.

The Thorpe Mystery

The origin of "thorpe" is disputed, and honestly, that makes it better. One story claims the engineers were fans of Olympic great Jim Thorpe and named it in his honor. Another suggests it's from the Old Norse word for village. A third theory? They just liked how it sounded. Nobody knows for sure, and the original engineers gave conflicting accounts.

The symbol itself is much older than its fancy name. It's been used since the 1300s as an abbreviation for "pound" in weight measurements—hence "pound sign." In proofreading, it meant "insert space here." It represented numbers (like "#1") before Twitter was even a concept.

Why Nobody Says Octothorpe

Bell Labs tried to make "octothorpe" happen. It didn't happen. Even the engineers who invented the term rarely used it in everyday conversation. It was too much of a mouthful for something people type constantly.

Then came the internet. Musicians used it for sharp notes. Programmers adopted it for code. IRC users called it "hash" for channel names. When Twitter launched hashtags in 2007, the symbol finally got a name that stuck—even though it's technically just combining "hash" with "tag."

Today, if you call it an octothorpe, people will either think you're:

• A telecom historian
• Showing off
• Confused about medical terminology
• Absolutely delightful at parties (the right kind of parties)

The beauty of octothorpe isn't that anyone uses it. It's that this perfectly functional symbol got saddled with a name so absurdly overengineered that it became more interesting than the symbol itself. It's linguistic jazz—technically correct, needlessly complex, and completely wonderful.

So go ahead: keep calling it a hashtag. But know that somewhere, a Bell Labs engineer's ghost is sighing deeply, muttering "octothorpe" into the void.