
The Word “Million” Didn’t Exist Until We Needed It - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/the-word-million-didnt-exist-until-we-needed-it
======
kichuku
My first language is Tamil which is spoken in South India. Tamil is known to
be a very ancient language.

The interesting fact is that Tamil has had distinct names for wide range of
numbers[1] ranging from 10^21 to fractions as small as
1/2,323,824,530,227,200,000,000

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_numerals#Sanskrit-
System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_numerals#Sanskrit-System)

There are people who debate that Tamil is as old/older than Sanskrit. But
there is no proof for that claim. But there is more than conclusive proof that
these distinct names for these large and small numbers existed in written
texts since very long time.

Edit: Grammar, fixed link

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hugh4
On a similar note, English outside the United States used the long-scale
billion (10^12, see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales))
until the last few decades.

When numbers on the order of 10^9 started to become a thing that needed to be
discussed regularly, everybody grudgingly switched to the American short-scale
"billion" on the grounds of it actually being useful.

~~~
seszett
How is it more useful though? It's just different words for the same numbers,
and it seems to me like long scale would actually be more useful because it
allows representing larger numbers.

~~~
bane
You can represent any number in either scale, the short scale simply aligns
the names with the comma/dot representation. The short scale offers more
precision and is easier to say when dealing with common "large" numbers like
GDP, or shipping volume or whatnot. Instead of saying "the trade imbalance
this quarter was $58 billion" you'd say "the trade imbalance this quarter was
$58 thousand million". Or "The total revenue this quarter was $23 billion, 118
million, 326 thousand, 112" or "$23 thousand million, 118 million, 326
thousand, 112".

The later is harder to say, maps poorly between representational spacers
(commas/dots depending), and is easy to confuse.

Keep in mind, before the 20th century, there wasn't much of a case where
_anybody_ would have to deal with figures this large, these days literally
everybody does. Getting rid of two syllables and aligning the spoken form with
the representational form greatly simplifies day-to-day speech.

~~~
Someone
That's why the long scale has milliard, billiard, trilliard, etc.

The long scale is slightly more logical with its

    
    
      (Latin number)illion = 10^(6 times Latin number)
      (whatever)illiard = 1000 times (whatever)illion
    

, compared to the short scale's

    
    
      (Latin number)illion = 10^(3 times Latin number plus 3)
    

that somehow maps even Latin numbers to odd exponents and vice versa.

If one could design this from a clean sheet, I think a short form where
billion = 10^6, trillion = 10^9 would make the most sense, as it logically
names numbers that one might encounter. Scientists who need huge numbers will
use scientific notation or phrases such as gigadollars.

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logicallee
I find this odd. Ancient Egyptian had a character for a million - someone
sitting/kneeling with one leg (like they just dropped to the ground) and
throwing their hands up in the air, (seeming to me) very very impressed, like
"whoa!"

Here it is -

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_numerals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_numerals)

maybe I'm reading too much into it. But anyway a million doesn't seem that
large of a number - if the ancient egyptians had it, why shouldn't societies
thousands of years later? So it's a bit odd...

~~~
jinushaun
The article explicitly mentions Egyptian. I think this story highlights the
recurring theme of medieval culture rediscovering ancient knowledge.

------
petercooper
New words can have significant impacts on how we perceive the world, down to
not even noticing certain things unless we have a word for them (Radiolab did
an episode on this called 'Words' \- the idea of the green/blue distinction
not being represented in other languages is another common issue).

Even in the tech world, I see how having a word to hang myriad ideas off of
can have a big impact. 'Logical' types howl and whine at things like 'cloud',
'Ajax', or 'HTML5' meaning things they don't _technically_ mean, but
nonetheless each brought numerous things together and in some cases (such as
'cloud') formed the cornerstone of a new sector. (See also the recent use of
the word 'unicorn' around here.)

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bboreham
On my first visit to India I was confused to find that big numbers were
expressed in 'lakh', which is 100,000. So a million could be "ten lakh".

This unit would be useful for discussing house prices where I live, but
doesn't seem to have caught on.

~~~
DanBC
Lakh is controversial on Stack Exchange. A bunch of people use it, and few
other people want to crush anything that's not US English and edit it out.

~~~
bane
Other than India, is Lakh used in any other English speaking countries or
dialects?

~~~
kissickas
NRIs have spread it around, I hear it all of the time here in the GCC but
usually only from Pakistanis or Indians. Most people are familiar with it and
understand it though.

~~~
partisan
NRI: Non-resident Indian

GCC: (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council (Countries)

Had to look them up just like many people have to look up lakh after seeing it
on Stack Overflow.

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swang
There is no actual "word" for million in Chinese.

百 is a hundred, 萬 is ten-thousand. A million is 百萬. But also I'm guessing 400萬
could be understood as the same as 4百萬/四百萬.

~~~
tomkwok
> There is no actual "word" for million in Chinese.

> 百 is a hundred, 萬 is ten-thousand. A million is 百萬. But also I'm guessing
> 400萬 could be understood as the same as 4百萬/四百萬.

But there is 億 in Chinese which means a hundred million.

    
    
        　十       　             10 ten
        　百      　             100 hundred
        　千      　           1,000 thousand
        　萬      　          10,000 ten-thousand
        十萬     　          100,000 hundred-thousand
        百萬     　        1,000,000 million
        千萬     　       10,000,000 ten-million
        　億     　      100,000,000 hundred-million
        十億    　     1,000,000,000 billion
        百億    　    10,000,000,000 ten-billion
        千億    　   100,000,000,000 hundred-billion
        萬億 or 兆 1,000,000,000,000 trillion
    

萬 and 億 are traditional Chinese characters. The simplified characters are 万
and 亿 respectively.

兆 is usually avoided because it does not only mean trillion but also 百萬
(million) in mainland China's translation of "mega-byte" or "mega-pixel" for
example.

~~~
escherplex
Interesting that 兆 is sometimes used in Hanzi for a trillion. Core meanings 兆
include 'portent' or 'omen' which could cause a central banker to lament
'maybe we've printed too much currency'. English used to have a simple system
for naming large numbers using the French suffix 'illion' for 'million' and
adding prefixes for powers of a million (see OED). So a billion was (10 ^ 6) ^
2 and by extension trillion was (10 ^6) ^ 3. A billion today was called a
thousand million then. However the US pushed for the value of 10 ^ 9 as a
billion (with trillion as 10 ^ 12) and back in 1975 that became the 'world'
standard.

~~~
telotortium
The world standard for English -- the long scale is standard in many other
languages.

~~~
escherplex
That's why 'world' was in quotes. Hubris is tedious, nationalist or otherwise.
I remember visiting someone's oversized digs who had an old Sony 3/4 inch
videocassette archives of Charles Kuralt's 'On the Road' series. In one,
Kuralt was whining about Jimmy Carter's attempts to impose the metric system
as US standard and ended his rant with 'there's nothing romantic about a
centimeter worm' [from some 'inch worm measuring a marigold' pop song]. That
general sentiment held and subsequent attempts at metrification fizzled out.
And we know what impact mixed standards had on construction of the mirror for
the Hubble space telescope.

------
yiyus
Isn't this the case for every word? I would cut off my right hand if you
found, for example, the word banana in old texts from the time before bananas
were discovered.

~~~
wodenokoto
I think the word googolplex was invented before anyone really needed it.

But I agree with you, that it would generally be silly to invent words for
concepts that have not yet been met by any speakers.

~~~
yiyus
Indeed, there are some exceptions. In the book "La Colmena" (I guess it is
called "The Hive" in English), by Camilo Jose Cela, there is a man who invents
words. He meets with writers in a café, and all of them listen to him with
much expectation: "did you invent any new word, master?" and he says something
like "Bizcotur" and everybody acclaims him: "Wonderful!", "Sublime!".

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jkot
How about 'decies centena milia'? Latin was cultural language back than.
Ancient Rome city had population a few millions and they often did census
which involved hundreds of millions people.

~~~
jinushaun
Though they don't mention it explicitly, Latin would have used "milia milia"
to represent million. The term "one thousand squared" (mili-one) was invented
later.

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shrewduser
did any word exist before we needed it?

~~~
shalmanese
Googolplex

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chrisdevereux
> there was no word for “million” in Old English, a medieval predecessor of
> the language you’re currently reading

This sentence is a fantastic example of why translation is so hard!

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shakadak
Would the concept of thousand be a mistake since it does not represent a
hundred hundreds ? Or it did not really appear with the same needs as million
?

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tacos
Consider Tagalog, which commonly uses native small numbers, Spanish for mid-
sized numbers, and English for larger, financial quantities.

