THE ORIGINAL NAME FOR THE SYMBOL MORE COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE HASHTAG (#).
Before it powered tweets and tagged topics, the symbol “#” had a different identity, and a different name: octothorp.
The “octo” part refers to its eight points. As for “thorp”? That’s where it gets a little fuzzy.
Some say it was added as a joke by Bell Labs employees in the 1960s, possibly referencing the Old English word for village.
Others claim it honored Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe. Either way, the name stuck. At least for a while.
It was sometimes used to indicate weight (as in “5#” for five pounds), and in typewriter days, it was simply called the number sign.
It wasn’t until the rise of social media that it was rebranded as the “hashtag,” transforming it from a rarely used glyph into a cultural marker.
From obscure typographic oddity to digital shorthand, not a bad second act.
