What is in a number?
Top 10 Numbers With Very Interesting Histories
Apparently, a lot. While it’s unlikely that we’ve ever given much thought to our numbers and numeral system, it has a pretty interesting history. First, the numeral system just about everyone reading this probably uses is called the Arabic numeral system or, more recently, the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. The original name is a misnomer, since it was invented in India and not in the Middle East.[1] However, they’re called “Arabic numerals” because Europeans thought they were invented by the Arabs. It’s not the just the numeral system that has a fascinating origin; individual numbers also have their own fascinating and downright surprising histories. Here are ten of them.
10‘Billion’
A billion, a one followed by nine zeros, is a thousand million. However, a little over four decades ago, the word “billion” referred to two different numbers. The first is a thousand million (a one and nine zeros), which remains a billion today, while the other is a million million (a one and 12 zeros), which we call a trillion today.This duality is due to differences between American and British English. American English has always recognized a billion as a thousand million, while British English used to recognize a billion as a million million. At the same time, British English recognized a thousand million (today’s billion) as a milliard.Likewise, there were two trillions. The first is the million million (a one and 12 zeros), which American English has always recognized as a trillion, while the other was a million million million (a one and 18 zeros), which British English recognized as a trillion. However, all these changed in 1974, when British English dumped the milliard and their definitions of billions and trillions for that of the Americans.[2]
9 40
How do you spell 40: “f-o-r-t-y” or “f-o-u-r-t-y?” Apparently, it’s the former. This has often confused even native English speakers, who sometimes add a “u” to “forty.” The reason for this confusion isn’t far-fetched. Most speakers assume that “forty” is derived from “four,” which has a “u.” Worse is that “fourty” hasn’t always been wrong and was once the correct spelling of 40. To explain the disparity, we first need to understand that “forty” was not derived from “four.” “Forty” was derived from Old English “feowertig,” which came from “feower,” which means “four,” and “tig,” which means “group of tens.” “Four” itself was “feower.” “Feowertig” and “feower” soon metamorphosed into “fourty” and “four.”However, this changed between the 15th and 17th centuries, during the Great Vowel Shift, which saw some words of the English language lose their vowel sounds and change in pronunciation. It was around the 16th century that “forty” first appeared. By the 1800s, “forty” appeared more frequently and soon overtook “fourty” to become the standard spelling.[3]
8 ‘Million’
The word “million” was introduced into the English language in the 14th century. The name was derived from the Old French million and Italian millione (“great thousand”), which were both derived from the Latin mille, which means “thousand.” English lacked a formal name for “million” for centuries because no one had any need for it. Apparently, no one had possessions or whatever that required them to count in millions. However, all this changed when people started counting in millions. First, they turned to the thousand, which had hitherto been the highest numerical value with an English name. “Thousand” was called “þusend,” which means “strong hundred” with “þ” being the now-extinct letter called the thorn. A million was called “þusend þusend” (thousand thousand) until million was borrowed from Old French.[4]7 Googol
A googol is one followed by 100 zeros. Back in 1996, the search engine we know today as Google was called BackRub. In 1997, Larry Page, one of Google’s co-founders, started deliberating with some friends on what to rename the search engine. One of the friends involved in the brainstorming session was