> In Spain and Portugal, the word for @ is "arroba", a term related to amphora that is also a standard unit of weight and measure.
It is in fact still used in certain contexts. For deciding when to slaughter the Iberian pig after feeding it exclusively with acorns in the open, it must weight 9 to 10 @s (an @ is 11.5kg, so 103.5 to 115kg)
In French it's "arobas" (Canada) or "arrobe"/"arobase" (France). When it started, we'd sometimes call it "a commercial" too.
I was coming to just also explain that. In my family it was exclusively used for the arroba unit of weight, used to measure the weight of animals, specially pigs and cows.
In itself the word arroba comes from Arab, meaning a quarter of something, which in Spain refers to a quarter of a quintal, that is 11.5kg.
Arroba is commonly used in Guatemala and signifies 25lbs (roughly 11.3kg)