>Consider the ampersand symbol "&", which is recognizable to many people who don't know the French word "et".<p>Which - to nitpick - is actually Latin and pre-dates French by several centuries:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand</a><p>it has a tradition in English as well, where it has actually more use than in other Latin derived languages, and actually the "ampersand" in English comes from a corruption of "and per se and", losing its original connection to "et".<p>In Italian the character is called "e commerciale" and in practice it is only used in the (anglo derived) names of firms (besides of course programming), in French it is esperluette, in Spanish it is called directly "et" (or Y comercial) in German it keeps the original relation with "et" as Et-zeichen (also Und-zeichen).<p>It is a very good example, as it is a symbol that originated in Latin, but which meaning was slightly changed by English and actually remained in common use only there, and survived centuries to "land" as a common symbol in computer scripting and programming.<p>About the floppy disk icon, it is IMHO a higly debatable one, like the (manilla) folder of the type used in vertical file cabinets, now that these are either completely extinct or only survive in a small number of offices.<p>I.e. the symbols were created in times where the object represented were extremely common, and as such were a good exemplification of a concept, but think also at the icon Winzip or similar use for compressed archives, a file cabinet inside a (compressing) C-clamp (in times when old-style metal clamps have become rare) compared to the (senseless) one where the symbol is a rectangle with a partially opened zipper.<p>So, personally I struggle to imagine symbols that could replace them "universally", i.e. there is the risk that <i>any</i> developer/designer would start using different images, creating a modern Tower of Babel.