What's the name of THIS symbol?

[ainslie]

Those who look at WW1 Medal Index Cards will have found many marked with a handwritten symbol consisting of a letter 'X', with a dot in each of the angles.  It is consistently used to link one entry on the card with an entry in another section, and is universally recognised as that, within the context of those cards.
But what is the name of the symbol?  It may never appear in print, but I have seen it in other contexts, perhaps as a variant of an asterisk.
Can anyone put my mind a rest?
A

[Stovepipe]

Characters do change their form over time, but if you'd rather not consider it an asterisk then as far as I know English offers no better name than "reference mark".

It does have another name, though, and it does appear in print - in Japanese! Visit the following pages for more information.

http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=203B

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_typographic_symbols#.E2.80.BB

[Koromo]

I have it as a character in some fonts including Arial and Helvetica on a Mac.


※
REFERENCE MARK
Unicode: 203B
UTF8: E2 80 BB

(Can everyone else see it okay?)


Koromo

[veeblevort]

Hi ainslie,

There are many variations of the asterisk, and I would suggest this is just one
of them. See  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterisk

Your example is shown as the East Asian asterisk, and there is even a Unicode
string for displaying it in computer output.

Koromo, I see it fine with Vista/IE8.

[ainslie]

Thanks for all that interesting information. 
Koromo, I see it clearly - I am on a PC with Windows.
I have looked in the symbols provided with Arial, but did not see it, but found a wide range - plenty of scope for browsing in other fonts, I expect.
Thanks again.
Ainslie

[Whipby]

I have seen this mark on a census form recently and wondered what it meant.  Does anyone know why it would be on a census form?

[Geoff-E]

In my Uni days we had a Maths lecturer who used the mark to draw attention to things he thought important in the notes he gave us.

Thus we knew it as the Preidel mark.

[scrimnet]

It is usually used on medal cards when x2 numbers have been issued to indicate which number is inscribed on the medals....

Or Which Regt when x2 Regts are listed, for same reason