Arabic numerals
From Wikinfo
Arabic numerals, in common usage, means representation of the digits of the decimal (base-10) system by the signs 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9.
The numerals actually originate from India, thus the name "Indian numerals". However, Europeans copied these numbers from the Arabs, who had copied them from the Indians, thus speakers of European languages call them "Arabic numerals". The Arabic numerals that Europeans use now have different shapes than the Indian numerals which Arabs use.
In 1202, Fibonacci introduced the decimal system and Arabic numerals to Europe and promoted them with his book Liber Abaci.
| File:Euro-Arab-Indic-numerals.png |
With all of these systems, one writes numbers with the more significant digit on the left. For example, one writes the number twelve as 12 because the "1" (representing ten) is more significant than the "2" (representing two).
Japan uses the name romaji to refer to Arabic numerals and the Roman alphabet. That is, romaji refer to both the numerals 0 through 9 and the letters A through Z. Romaji translates as "roman character". Note that Roman numerals (which one writes using Roman letters, not Arabic numerals) are different from romaji numerals, which are Arabic numerals.
See also: Numeral system, Armenian numerals, Babylonian numerals, Chinese numerals, Greek numerals, Hebrew numerals, Indian numerals, Japanese numerals, Mayan numerals, Roman numerals, Thai numerals.
External links
- Hindu Arabic Numeric Medieval Ideograms
- Unicode reference glyphs for Arabic (See code U+0660-U+0669, U+06F0-U+06F9)
- Unicode reference glyphs for Devanagari (See code U+0966-U+096F)
- Unicode reference glyphs for Tamil (See code U+0BE6-U+0BEF)
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Arabic numerals" http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals August 17, 2003
