Patrick Foote of Name Explain spoke about the origin of the ampersand in English and other Latin-based languages.
The Latin word for “and” was simply et. This is still the French word for “and” too. …..Ampersand started life as the e and t of ET being mushed together into one character before becoming the symbol it is known as today. In fact in some fonts the Ampersand does still look like an ENT hybrid.
