Why is the dereference operator (*) also used to declare a pointer?

Question

I\'m not sure if this is a proper programming question, but it\'s something that has always bothered me, and I wonder if I\'m the only one.

When initially learning C++,

Answer 1

The reason is clearer if you write it like this:

int x, *y;

That is, both x and *y are ints. Thus y is an int *.