How and why did Weierstrass $\wp$ get its special symbol?

I kind of always hated drawing the Weierstrass $\wp$ symbol by hand, and it struck me as odd how and why it achieved its special status in the first place. After all, there are tons of other important functions throughout different areas of math, but very few (if any) get special symbols; even in complex analysis, other functions, e.g., Riemann $\zeta$, are more famous than $\wp$. (I'm not very deep into complex analysis so I can't claim that $\wp$ is necessarily less important than $\zeta$.)

Could anyone please provide a bit of historical notes on Weierstrass $\wp$? A quick Google search yields a Google Books result, but the account is woefully short and doesn't seem to explain anything.

this situation is most likely analogous to how the integral symbol garnered it's affection from others. It was just simply appealing in a subjective way. I would be willing to say part of the love of mathematics is 'how cool the symbols look'. Magical thinking. I would bet it's more of a psychological and sociological phenomenon than anything of significance.