Period or full stop?

[Sahid59]

Hi friends...

What I wonder is why they call the (.) dot in American English as period. In India (following British pronunciation) we say it as '' Full Stop ''. But, in my opinion, even it is not sometimes to be considered as ' full stop '' because it is used in between as well as at the end of the abbreviations such as U.S.

Now in modern usage we see the periods are used only inside of URLs like http//www.bbc.com

Any logical explanation from British/American native speakers...?

Thanks..

..
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Sahid59

Better tomorrow with better English

[Cerberus™]

My guess is that in British it is called after the way it is most often used. That is to end a sentence.

[Mister Micawber]

.
An interesting bit from Wikipedia:

"The term full stop is rarely used by speakers in Canada, and virtually never in the United States, but it is by far the most common term used in British English.

If it is used in Canada, it may be generally differentiated from period in contexts where both might be used: a full stop is specifically a delimiting piece of punctuation that represents the end of a sentence.[citation needed] When a distinction is made, a period is then any appropriately sized and placed dot in English language text, including use in abbreviations (such as U.S.) and at the ends of sentences, but excluding certain special uses of dots at the bottom of a line of text, such as ellipses.

The term STOP was used in telegrams in place of the period. The end of a sentence would be marked by STOP, as punctuation cost extra.[1] The end of the entire telegram would be noted by FULL STOP.

In American English, "period" is the prevailing term for the punctuation mark that terminates a sentence."
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Native English teacher at Mister Micawber's