What is the hamburger menu icon called and the three vertical dots icon called?

Question

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".

Solution 1

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

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

Solution 2

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

• Kebab menu
• More options icon

For the remaining, here is the list.

Solution 3

According to Reddit, more options icon and kabob menu are popular names. I prefer the latter as it goes well with hamburger menu.

Solution 4

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

• Horizontal stripes : Hamburger menu / icon / button -> -> as per wiki. A name like "sandwich button" would also have been good IMO :(
• Vertical ellipsis : Dango menu / icon / button -> -> credits to this guy. This one I like thanks to the song from the super duper anime Clannad

Solution 5

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

View more solutions

Comments

[vhs]

☰ is known as the Trigram for Heaven and was approved as part of Unicode 1.1 in 1993.

[gawkface]

@SalmanA : We're all "someone else" to someone else - Calvin's dad (gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1989/05/02)

[wildbagel]

I believe the spelling is "kebab".

[tronman]

@wildbagel According to Google, it's "shish kabob".

[wildbagel]

And according to Wikipedia, it's kebab: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kebab But to your point, it looks like kabob is an accepted English spelling.

[Patryk Janik]

Taken from Luke Wroblewski: twitter.com/lukew/status/591296890030915585?lang=en

[Ben Butzer]

+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.

[Peter Chaula]

Ellipsis is the perfect name for as the icon resembles ellipsis.

[Mikael Lindqvist]

It might be offensive to vegans. I suggest "falafel menu" instead.

[Phil Hobrla]

I believe Microsoft calls the "Bento" menu a "Waffle" menu although I think its official name is the "Microsoft 365 app launcher."

[Shengchalover]

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.