Topic: When Did # Become Hashtag?

As far as I've ever known, # was always called pound (even to this day, automated phone lines still call it pound when prompting you to push it).

Then Twitter comes around, and all of a sudden people are going around calling it hashtag. So, does anyone know the reason for the name change?

I'm just assuming most Twitter users were/are unaware of it's true name, and started calling hashtag for some reason, lol.

Idk in my country we often call it gato. (that's cat in spanish).

♯ > #

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashtag

^Okay then. So a "hashtag" is just any word or phrase preceded by the #, not the # itself.

As for the #, it's commonly called "pound" in the U.S. (what I'm used to), "hash" in the U.K., and "number sign" in Canada.

In NA, it's ofted used in place of the word "number", as in writing "#1", instead of writing "number 1". Although in the U.K., it's rarely used to replace "number" ("No." is used for that purpose).

I use "No." all the time, actually. Well, mostly when I'm referencing certain classical pieces. 'Op. 28, No. 17' looks much better than 'Op. 28, #17' for instance >_<

It is, and always will be, a friggin pound sign! Just because something new and hip comes along doesn't mean the creator gets to completely change what society calls some element of it. Cadillac didn't get to didn't gain the right to rename the wheel "hashwheel" because it had a popular car on its hands, did it? It's a pound sign!

And tweeting's for birds.

read the wiki article.

it's not as bad as this poor little fella: .

He went from a period to just a plain 'ole dot.

I never knew people called it a pound sign until I moved to the US. I was pretty confused the first time I rang somewhere and they asked me to press the "pound sign" - it took me a minute to figure out what they meant. It's not that hard, really, since it's the only non-numeric character on a keypad apart from the asterisk, but it threw me when I was sitting there figuring out how to navigate the menus.

I'm in UK and we can't call it the Pound due to our currency £. I've always known it at the hash key:
123
456
789
#0*

Agree with that.

You've got to be kidding me! This is a joke, right... right?

There's simply no way anyone would try and officially call a "period" (or "full stop" for all you U.K. people) a "dot", right?

I only call it a dot when there's something like this... then I say dotdotdot, not periodperiodperiod.

The official term for ... is ellipsis.

'dotdotdot' sounds funnier when you say it aloud, though, and everyone knows what you mean. :3

Everyone loves a good laugh. Plus dotdotdot is sorta fun to say.

Well, in spanish we call it punto. (which means dot)

So, at least here it is pretty normal to call it dot.

I've always called it a number sign and I never really knew it was called a pound sign until about high school and I lived in the US for all my 26 years of existance.

Also doesn't # have another name when used in music? A sharp, is it?

@SMW I believe so.