@er1n I remember hearing that the reason it's called the ampersand is because of reciting the alphabet in schools

it used to be part of the alphabet as just "and" and it was at the end of the alphabet

as "x, y, z, and and" sounds weird they decided to go for "x, y, z, and by itself and"

'course because schools they did it in latin so "x, y, z, and per se and"

ended up getting corrupted into ampersand