This is kind of interesting as this weekend I randomly came across the history of &. It was once taught as the 27th letter of the alphabet and was read as "and". To make it clearer when reciting the alphabet, students were taught to say "X, Y, Z and per se and" for X, Y, Z, &. (per se in this case meaning by itself). Eventually "and per se and" became ampersand. :)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand]