A couple of Bell Labs employees decided to call it an "Octotherp"—a name pretty much pulled out of thin air. ("Octo-" refers to the shapes eight lines that stick out of the sides; "-therp" is completely made up.)
"Octotherp" morphed into "octothorpe"—which, rumor has it, came from someone at Bell Labs changing the name to turn it into a tribute to an olympic athlete named Jim Thorpe. But no one really knows.
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gizmodo.com
If you want to follow conversation threads relating to this show on social media—whether Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, Tumblr—you know to look for the hashtag: #99pi. In our current digital age, the hashtag identifies movements, events, happenings, brands—topics of all kinds. The "#" didn't ...
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The symbol # is most commonly known as the number sign, hash, or pound sign. It is believed that the symbol traces its origins to the symbol ℔, an abbreviation of the Roman term libra pondo, which translates as "pound weight". A 1917 manual distinguishes between two uses of the sign: "number (written before a figure)"; and "pounds (written after a figure)".
In the United Kingdom and Ireland, it is generally called a hash (probably ultimately from "hatch", referring to cross-hatching, although the exact derivation is disputed).
It should not be called a sharp, even though it is used in C#. Microsoft says, "It's not the 'hash' (or pound) symbol as most people believe. It's actually supposed to be the musical sharp symbol U+266F (♯). However, because the sharp symbol is not present on the standard keyboard, it's easier to type the hash ('#') symbol.
Listen to Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day "Octothorpe" podcast (2:46)
Additional article on the "#" touch-tone phone key by one of the people who worked on the design for the touch-tone keypad: http://dougkerr.net/Pumpkin/articles/Octatherp-octotherp.pdf
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