A friend of mine sent this to me and I thought all you language buffs would find it interesting. "Thought you might be amused. This came up on AUTOCAT, the discussion list for cataloging, as part of a discussion on how to transcribe the symbol when it appears as part of a title: "TRAVEL GUIDE. The @ sign so prevalent in electronic addresses is known as chiocciolina (little snail) in Italy, petit escargot(little snail) in France, klammeraffe (spider monkey) in Germany, api (shortened from apestaart, meaning monkey's tail), in the Netherlands, kanel-bolle (a spiral-shaped cinnamon cake) in Norway, snabel A (an A with a trunk) in Denmark, shtrudel in Israel, cat tail or miau in Finland, an arroba in Spain (a unit of about 25 lbs., for which it is the sign)."