The ampersand is not a letter, but a linguistic relic
We often treat the ampersand as a 27th letter of the alphabet, but its true origin is much more ancient. It is not a standalone character, but a visual fusion of two Latin letters, preserved through centuries of scribal shorthand and printing evolution.
The ampersand (&) began as a ligature—a physical joining of characters—of the Latin word 'et', meaning 'and'. Tracing its lineage back to the 1st century CE, the symbol emerged from Old Roman cursive, where scribes frequently merged the letters 'E' and 't'. While the 9th-century Carolingian minuscule saw a decline in general ligatures, this specific 'et' connection persisted, gradually becoming more stylized and less recognizable as its constituent parts.
The name 'ampersand' itself is a phonetic corruption of a classroom ritual. Historically, when reciting the alphabet, letters that could function as words—such as 'A', 'I', and 'O'—were referred to using the Latin expression 'per se' (meaning 'by itself'). When students reached the symbol, they would say 'and per se and' to indicate the symbol represented the word 'and' on its own. By 1837, this phrase had been slurred into the single word we use today.
While some mistakenly attribute the symbol's name to the physicist André-Marie Ampère, there is no evidence he used the symbol in his publications to inspire the name. Instead, the symbol's utility has spanned diverse fields: from the 1011 list of letters by Byrhtferð to modern computing languages like C++ and Rust, where it serves as a bitwise operator or a memory address indicator. It even carries specific weight in Hollywood; the Writers Guild of America uses the ampersand to denote a close, simultaneous collaboration between two writers, distinguishing it from the 'and' used for separate contributions.
Source: Ampersand
