The Noble Ampersand: Meaning, Significance & Origins

Allow me to lay beneath your eyes a few words upon that curious and most precocious of punctuation symbols, the ampersand. Readers may have noticed the presence of the ampersand in the club name—you know, that twisty thing in between the 1 and the 4. Lately, I have noticed a bit of confusion and/or ignorance about just what the hell that pretzel is doing in the club name, and I will now take a few moments to clarify and educate. Grasping this concept is just as important to club membership as understanding the symbolism within the ol’ Stars-and-Stripes is to American citizenship (or knowing the essential “facts” to identify/kill any cryptid—as well as to disprove alleged witnesses.) Take pride in knowing that this club does not condescend to popular fashions by using a crude and ambiguous word like “and” where a perfectly good (and sumptuously curved) punctuation symbol already exists. It's simply a matter of style and efficiency—basic principles of any good subbuteo team.

Now, to drop some knowledge. First, the symbol: &. The ampersand visually represents the Latin word for “and”: et. So, if you kinda squint, you can see that the left portion of the symbol sort of looks like an E and the right portion could be a T. Get it? And dos, the name: ampersand. Sounds like someone just made that up or mumbled something, right? That’s exactly how it happened. Originally, when English-speaking children recited the alphabet they included the ampersand after Z, considering it the 27^th letter. Properly spoken, it would go “X, Y, Z, and per se and.” Per se simply means “in place of,” meaning the symbol that represents the word “and.” Eventually, this mouthful at the end of the alphabet became slurred by lazy schoolchildren and was dropped altogether by lazy adults.

And there you have it, the humble origins and complex meaning of our totally awesome logogram. No longer do will you have to shamefully hang your head with ignorance (and maybe even shame) when someone asks what that screwed up percentage sign is doing in the club name. Tell them it’s an ampersand—and then tell them to flick off, or else they’ll be messing with a whole subbuteo club of trouble.

Yours truly,

T-Dexxx