8 ms·

I had heard that IV might be considered sacrilegious, as the god Jupiter would have once been spelled IVPPITER, as I was used for modern J and V for modern U.

dhosek 3y ago
There is a similar thing with Hebrew numerals¹ where 15 and 16 are usually written as תו and תז to avoid what would otherwise be forms of the name of God. ⸻ 1. The Hebrew numeral system, like the Greek numeral system is an almost-decimal system in that different letters are used for each of the different values, but the letters change by place value as well as by their individual value, so, e.g., 21 is written כא where כ stands for 20 and א stands for 1.
- Adverblessly 3y ago
  Minor correction: that's טו and טז. אבגדהוזחט - count one through nine יכלמנסעפצ - count ten through ninety קרשת - count one hundred through four hundred so תו would be 406 while טו is 9+6=15
  - dhosek 3y ago
    D’oh that’s what I get for trusting my mediocre Hebrew keyboarding skills. For those who don’t know the Hebrew alphabet, both ת and ט are commonly transcribed as T (the former often as TH, but it’s meant to be a German aspirated T sound rather than the English th).
- madcaptenor 3y ago
  To clarify, those are 9 + 6 and 9 + 7; the forms to be avoided would be 10 + 5 and 10 + 6.
- mariotacke 3y ago
  Interesting. I wonder if this is related to how Germans count/pronounce numbers. 21 in your example is "einundzwanzig" in German (or "ein-und-zwanzig", "one-and-twenty")
  - zeven7 3y ago
    I think in this case it’s because Hebrew is read right to left, so unrelated.
    - dhosek 3y ago
      Yep. The reversed order is also something that you see in archaic English, for example the nursery rhyme, “four and twenty blackbirds”
- jddj 3y ago
  Japanese changed a couple too. From memory the pronunciation/written form of 4(?) was changed in some cases because it resembled death
  - dhosek 3y ago
    The only Japanese number form change I’m aware of is a special form for one (一) (and possibly two 二) to prevent them from being altered on checks into three (三), but I’m far from an expert.
  - xandrius 3y ago
    In Japanese its often the case that a kanji has different ways of reading it, so it's not just that.
sebtron 3y ago
This is the same explanation I was given. In Roman times it was common to only write the first few letters of a word, just enough to be able to extrapolate the full word from the context. IV was a common abbreviation for IVPPITER.

dhosek 3y ago

There is a similar thing with Hebrew numerals¹ where 15 and 16 are usually written as תו and תז to avoid what would otherwise be forms of the name of God. ⸻ 1. The Hebrew numeral system, like the Greek numeral system is an almost-decimal system in that different letters are used for each of the different values, but the letters change by place value as well as by their individual value, so, e.g., 21 is written כא where כ stands for 20 and א stands for 1.

Adverblessly 3y ago
Minor correction: that's טו and טז. אבגדהוזחט - count one through nine יכלמנסעפצ - count ten through ninety קרשת - count one hundred through four hundred so תו would be 406 while טו is 9+6=15
- dhosek 3y ago
  D’oh that’s what I get for trusting my mediocre Hebrew keyboarding skills. For those who don’t know the Hebrew alphabet, both ת and ט are commonly transcribed as T (the former often as TH, but it’s meant to be a German aspirated T sound rather than the English th).
madcaptenor 3y ago
To clarify, those are 9 + 6 and 9 + 7; the forms to be avoided would be 10 + 5 and 10 + 6.
mariotacke 3y ago
Interesting. I wonder if this is related to how Germans count/pronounce numbers. 21 in your example is "einundzwanzig" in German (or "ein-und-zwanzig", "one-and-twenty")
- zeven7 3y ago
  I think in this case it’s because Hebrew is read right to left, so unrelated.
  - dhosek 3y ago
    Yep. The reversed order is also something that you see in archaic English, for example the nursery rhyme, “four and twenty blackbirds”
jddj 3y ago
Japanese changed a couple too. From memory the pronunciation/written form of 4(?) was changed in some cases because it resembled death
- dhosek 3y ago
  The only Japanese number form change I’m aware of is a special form for one (一) (and possibly two 二) to prevent them from being altered on checks into three (三), but I’m far from an expert.
- xandrius 3y ago
  In Japanese its often the case that a kanji has different ways of reading it, so it's not just that.

sebtron 3y ago

This is the same explanation I was given. In Roman times it was common to only write the first few letters of a word, just enough to be able to extrapolate the full word from the context. IV was a common abbreviation for IVPPITER.