Why 1 is one and 2 is two and 3 is three…
The numbers we all use (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) are known as “Arabic” numbers to distinguish them from the “Roman Numerals” (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, etc). Actually the Arabs popularized these numbers but they were originally used by the early Phonecian traders to count and keep track of their trading accounts.
Have you ever thought why …….. 1 means “one”, and 2 means “two”? The Roman Numerals are easy to understand but what was the logic behind the Phonecian numbers?
It’s all about angles !
It’s the number of angles. If one writes the numbers down (see below) on a piece of paper in their older forms, one quickly sees why. I have marked the angles with “o”s.
No 1 has one angle.
No 2 has two angles.
No 3 has three angles. etc.
…..
and “O” has no angles
Thanks Janet
This seems to be a bogus theory. From the Wikipedia page on Arabic Numerals:
“Despite evidence to the contrary, some folkloric explanations for the origin of modern Arabic numerals persist. While these hypotheses continue to propagate due to their seemingly well-constructed arguments, they were based entirely on speculation by individuals who, while genuinely intrigued by the subject, were either ignorant of the relevant archeological facts, or simply lived in an era preceding much of their modern rediscovery. One popular example of such myths claims that the original forms of these symbols indicated their value through the quantity of angles they contained.”
what about A,B,C,D why the pattern, why its not Z,A,G,D
BS. Why does 7 have a “foot”, but 1 doesn’t ? And that extra curly end at the bottom of the 9 is only there to increase the number of angles – as it is at the bottom of 5 but not at the top.
robert.wood had my thoughts exactly. And the “8″…no way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_%28number%29#Evolution_of_the_glyph