A couple in China wanted to name their son '@'. Considering that almost everyone in China's got symbols in his name, it's not as big a deal as it might first seem. @ is pronounced 'ai ta' in Mandarin, which sounds like "love him."
As a guy who, in 1993, when registering a domain name was a free but portentous ordeal, and you'd NEVER consider getting a .com if you were a .edu, and a Winsock user license cost $265, seriously contemplated getting llen.com, just for the email, I can say with some authority that little @ dodged a big •.
Couple Tried To Name Baby '@' [reuters]
Parents are getting creative nowadays. Being a Chinese, I wonder how the name fits into a Chinese name. @ will look awkward and it's not even in the dictionary.
[the reuters story references a year-old report from china daily about people using obscure characters from the 50,000 character Kang Hsi dictionary that aren't recognized by any computers. -ed.]