punctuationsingle-word-requestssynonymstypographyword-choice
Is there an alternative name for the question mark? For example, the exclamation point is often called a bang, the number symbol is called a pound sign or sharp symbol and the asterisk symbol is often called a star.
Is there such an alternative name for the question mark whether it be slang or otherwise?
This Wikipedia article on the dagger (archived by Swarthmore College Computer Society) claims:
History
The symbol was first used in liturgical books of the Roman Catholic Church, marking a minor intermediate pause in the chanting of Psalm verses (the major intermediate pause was marked with an asterisk) or the point at which the chanting of the Psalm was taken up after an introductory antiphon whose words were identical to the opening words of the Psalm.
Usage
The dagger is usually used to indicate a footnote, in the same way an asterisk is. However, the dagger is only used for a second footnote when an asterisk is already used. A third footnote employs the double dagger. Additional footnotes are somewhat inconsistent and represented by a variety of symbols, e.g., parallels (||) and the pilcrow (¶), some of which were nonexistent in early modern typography. Partly because of this, superscript numerals have increasingly been used in modern literature in the place of these symbols, especially when several footnotes are required. Some texts use asterisks and daggers alongside superscripts, using the former for per-page footnotes and the latter for endnotes.
Robert Bringhurst's 2005 The Elements of Typographic Style (version 3.1) (nicknamed Bringhurst's Bible by typographers) says the traditional order of symbols is *, †, ‡, §, ‖, ¶ and goes on to say:
“But beyond the ... double dagger, this order is not familiar to most readers, and never was.”
The order doesn't come from typewriters, which were invented in 1868, because they were used as footnotes before this. Here's an example from a 1792 magazine:
And the asterisk, dagger, double-dagger, section mark:
But they also used numbered footnotes, especially when there were many footnotes, such as these nine:
Here's Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine from 1819 with six footnotes; asterisk, dagger, double-dagger, section mark, parallels and pilcrow:
The asterisk is used before a dagger to denote birth and death dates. Typographers Hoefler & Frere-Jones say:
Both characters have functions in genealogy and other life sciences, where the asterisk indicates the year of birth (*1499), and the dagger the year of death (†1561). There are standard fourth-, fifth- and sixth-order reference marks, too: they are the section mark (§), parallels (||), and number sign (#), after which the cycle repeats with doubles, triples, and so on: *, †, ‡, §, ||, #, **, ††, ‡‡, §§, ||||, ###, ***, †††, ‡‡‡, etc. Beyond three, numbered footnotes are always preferable, even if you are David Foster Wallace.
The Sweet Sound of Punctuation by Yves Peters says of the dagger:
Because its shape is reminiscent of a Christian cross, in predominantly Christian regions the mark may also appear before or after the name of a deceased person, or the date of death. Therefore, it's not used as a footnote mark next to the name of a living person.
It also says another name for dagger is obelisk. So: asterisk and obelisk => Asterix and Obelix!
The key question here is whether a proper name whose creators included end punctuation for it must be reproduced with that end punctuation in order to be correctly spelled. If the answer to that preliminary question is yes, then we must proceed to the question that the poster asks about how to accommodate the built-in punctuation when introducing context-appropriate punctuation.
The preliminary question came up repeatedly at the consumer technology magazines where I work, thanks to the effervescent marketing personalities who graced the tech landscape with names like Yahoo!, Astound!, and Utter Bullblap!. Our arbitrary, unsympathetic response has been to treat the alphanumeric components of a proper name as integral to the name, and to treat end punctuation as promotional fluff. Goodbye exclamation points, asterisks, virgules, octothorps, and any other symbols attached to the end of a name to attract the unwary eye and sell more units of the product.
To the extent that exotic punctuation is simply a vehicle for promoting sales or market visibility, dutifully reproducing that punctuation amounts to enlisting oneself and one's publication in the promotional effort—hardly a comfortable position for an independent source of information to be in. That awkwardness helps explain why The Economist in February of 2013 adopted a no-exclamation-points-in-product-names style. I applaud that publication for its decision.
The slippery slope of deferring to the preferences of those who invent proper names, whether for commercial products or for towns and other geographical entities, is evident when you consider the annoying reverse-R favored by the Toys "R" Us toy company; does anyone not in marketing feel strongly that people writing about this company should mirror the R to match the backward proper-name style that the company copyrighted? On a more mundane level, would anyone think to include the period in the name of the restaurant chain Carl's Jr. to yield sentences like "Let's go to Carl's Jr.!" "I had lunch at Carl's Jr.." and "Do you want to go to Carl's Jr.?"? It's really quite absurd.
Best Answer
The answer is "query".
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. query, n 2: