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Google and some other developers have introduced us to what some have called the hamburger menu button and now the 3 vertical dots button or vertical ellipsis. What is the official name of these buttons/icons?

It would be nice if developers could consistently use a particular icon for menus. It would also be nice to know what to tell novice users to press.

Background Info:

Horizontal Ellipsis … … … …
Apple uses the horizontal ellipsis and calls it the More Options icon.
According to https://design.google.com/icons/ the icon is called "more horiz".

Vertical Ellipsis ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮
Google+ for desktop seems to use this as a menu for communities. The Google+ app uses this icon as a standard menu icon.
According to https://design.google.com/icons/ the icon is called "more vert".

Identical To ≡ ≡ ≡ ≡
Google Chrome uses an image similar to Identical To and calls it the Chrome menu.
It has also been called the "hamburger" icon, "hotdog" icon, Options menu, Menu button, Overflow menu, Side menu, Menu drawer...
According to https://design.google.com/icons/ the icon is called "menu".

Zoe
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Jeff Baker
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    ☰ is [known as](https://unicode-table.com/en/2630/) the _Trigram for Heaven_ and was approved as part of [Unicode 1.1](http://unicode.org/versions/Unicode1.1.0/) in 1993. – vhs Feb 14 '19 at 18:01

7 Answers7

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Look at this photo, it says "Kebab Menu" is a correct answer:

enter image description here

per comment below, sourced from Luke Wroblewski: https://twitter.com/lukew/status/591296890030915585/photo/1

Ben Butzer
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Patryk Janik
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    Taken from Luke Wroblewski: https://twitter.com/lukew/status/591296890030915585?lang=en – Patryk Janik Jan 21 '19 at 14:41
  • +1 on this link. An Apple engineer called out the "Meatball" menu earlier this month on our app, which was the first time I was exposed to that slang term. I would still call them horizontal and vertical ellipsis to any non-technical person. – Ben Butzer Jun 14 '19 at 14:57
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    It might be offensive to vegans. I suggest "falafel menu" instead. – Mikael Lindqvist Apr 15 '21 at 02:07
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    I believe Microsoft calls the "Bento" menu a "Waffle" menu although I think its official name is the "Microsoft 365 app launcher." – Phil Hobrla Jun 02 '21 at 19:46
32

For the 3 vertical dot icon, these are the most popular names

  • Kebab menu
  • More options icon

For the remaining, here is the list.

Picture Credit- @MichaelBabich

Nechar Joshi
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    This needs to be updated to reflect three-dots-in-a-circle-menu, popularised by HIG Gods from Cupertino, and now also by Gods from Redmond. I propose Meatballs Plate Menu. – Shengchalover Jun 24 '21 at 18:33
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According to Reddit, more options icon and kabob menu are popular names. I prefer the latter as it goes well with hamburger menu.

tronman
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14

Cannot say about the "official nomenclature" - infact I wonder whose word will be "official" anyway - but here's how they can be called:

gawkface
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4

Not an official name per se, but I've heard vertical ellipsis referred to as "snowman" in SAS community.

thinkbot
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We call it the "ant" menu. Guess it was a good time to change since everyone had just gotten used to the hamburger.

tiz.io
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    @SalmanA : We're all "someone else" to someone else - Calvin's dad (http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1989/05/02) – gawkface May 17 '17 at 08:22
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At eBay it’s the kabob.

Also heard it called the snowman or sushi roll.

Jon
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