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

Haha, I feel your pain, I had the exact same problem.

I thought a pointer should be declared as &int because it makes sense that a pointer is an address of something.

After a while I thought for myself, every type in C has to be read backwards, like

int * const a

is for me

a constant something, when dereferenced equals an int. Something that has to be dereferenced, has to be a pointer.