The ampersand is the name given to the typographic sign "&", which can replace the word "and".

Today found on computer keyboards around the world and frequently used by major brands, its origin dates back to ancient Rome.

Every day in 

Historically yours

, David Castello-Lopes looks back on the origins of an object or a concept.

This Friday, he looks at this typographic sign which can replace the word "and": the ampersand, the famous "&".

If it is present today on all computer keyboards and is frequently used by brands, its origin goes back well before our era, to Roman times.

>> Find all the shows of Matthieu Noël and Stéphane Bern in replay and podcast here

A common sign in brand names and passwords

"The ampersand is the name of this typographic sign which looks like a sort of 8 whose laces are undone. We see it mainly in two situations: first on certain brands which are made up of two names or two If you look for example at the logo of H and M, that of Marks and Spencer or that of Dolce and Gabbana, it's an ampersand that has been slipped between the two names.

Then we see it a lot in passwords.

In recent years, people have been asked to create passwords that contain special characters, like the ampersand.

For example, my secret code on Facebook is "SexyMaçon666 &".

A history of ligature dating back to Roman times

So where does this "weird" sign come from?

First I have to explain something based on the signature of Stéphane Bern.

There is something very beautiful to see in your signature and that is how the R and N of Bern are fused into each other, ie the end of your "r" is confuses with the beginning of your "n".

Thanks to you, I just explained what a ligature is.

A ligature in typography and writing is the act of transforming letters to bind them when these letters are next to each other.

Our ancestors the Romans also made it.

And the more frequent the combination of letters they wrote, the more they tended to make ligatures.

The first occurrence dates from the 8th century

However among the letters which are very often next to each other in Latin there are the letters "e" and "t".

Which means "and" like at home.

The Romans then after them the Merovingians did not stop as soon as they wrote the letters "e" and "t" to make ligatures, which took several different forms over the centuries.

One of these forms is the ampersand that we know today and the first occurrence of which dates from the 8th century.

But unlike most other ligatures, it remained to the point of becoming a typeface when the printing press was created, before even being incorporated into computer keyboards today.

So why is the ampersand an 8 with the laces undone?

Where is the "e" and where is the "t"?

Take a capital E and add a bar to the right to go quickly, it makes a sort of 8. The laces undone from 8, it's T. CQFD. "