We’ve all heard it at some point in our lives:

“That’s not an ‘and symbol’…it’s an AM-PER-SAND!”

AM-PER-SAND, d'ya hear me?!?

Ampersand. Such a strange little word…what schoolchild can remember it? Like a clam, it has “sand” in it, and like a clam, it is not a word that opens up to inquiry very easily. But foolishly, we’ll try anyway.

How the Ampersand Got It’s Name

The Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC-43 BC) had a lot to say about things in his day—making his name as an attorney (he successfully prosecuted the corrupt and fabulously powerful governor of Sicily, a feat that caused him to be known as “the greatest orator in Rome”), philosopher (Somnium Scipionis is a very fine read, for example), and politician (he drove the usurper Catiline from Rome with four vehement speeches known as the Cataline Orations). He out-talked Caesar, Marc Antony, and many others. Indeed, his writings were so numerous, that more survived to the Middle Ages than any other Latin author, and the rediscovery of his letters by Petrarch is said to have initiated that little movement we know as the Renaissance.

Cicero talked a lot.

The point is: Cicero spoke and wrote a lot. But the fellow with his hand on the stylus—writing down every conversation, speech, letter, and book—was Marcus Tullius Tiro, Cicero’s faithful slave and secretary. To get this impossible job done, Tiro invented a shorthand system.

In that system (known as Tironian notes), Tiro smooshed the Latin word for “and” (which was et) together to create a symbol that evolved into “&.”

Evolution of the ampersand.

The “&” symbol meant “et” to the Romans, and they would say “et” when they read “&.” The figure was so useful that it was eventually adopted by speakers of other languages as well. When they would read “&,” they would say “et” (if they were French) or “e” (if they were Italian) or “und” (if they were German) or, if they were English, they would say “and.”

“&” was very popular, and by the early 19th century, “&” was even added to the end of the English alphabet in all school grammar books. It was read at the very end, right after “Z.” This primer from 1814 shows it there, all big and proud:

There it is, all proud at the end of the line.

And this primer, from 1857 shows it again (in case you really don’t believe us):

And again!

Now, when reciting the alphabet in 19th century grammar class, any letter that could also be used as a one-letter word (like “A” or “I”) was preceded by “per se” (the Latin for by itself). This is the equivalent of saying “the letter ‘I,’ not the word ‘I.’” I know it seems like overkill, but those Victorians did want to be sure everything was just so and in its proper place.

So, from around 1800 to around 1900, the alphabet would be recited like this:

“per se A B C D E F G H and per se I J K L M N and per se O (because ‘O’ was a word back then, as in ‘O Holy Night’) P Q R S T U V W X Y Z and per se & (where ‘&’ is pronounced ‘and’)”

I don’t know about you, but saying all that extra jibberish under penalty of spanking seems like a rough way to spend a childhood. So, as kids are often as sly as they are lazy, they cheated a bit. Not so much that they’d get the switch, but enough to speed things up. So rather than say “and per se and” they would say, “ampersand.”

(Interestingly, in Scotland, they would say “et per se” instead of “and per se” and so when they simplified it, it became “epershand”—and still is!)

Now, you might ask, why don’t we have words like “ampersai” instead of “I”? As things turned out, we say “the letter I” instead of “per se I” if we need to refer to the letter. Even keeping the ampersand in the alphabet went out of fashion around the same time as Queen Victoria’s death, and by about 1900 it no longer appears after Z in the grammar books.

So… Is it really wrong to call “&” an “and sign” or just “and” or even “the former 27th letter known as and”? It seems to be just as proper as the formalized slang now revered as the “ampersand.”

Take that, grammar bullies!