Devanagari Numerals and Their Sanskrit Names
Below is a list of the Indian numerals in their modern Devanagari form, the corresponding European (Indo-Arabic) equivalents, their Sanskrit pronunciation, and translations in some languages.
| Modern Devanagari |
Hindu-Arabic | Sanskrit word for the ordinal numeral (wordstem) |
Translations in some languages |
|---|---|---|---|
| ० | 0 | śhūnya (शून्य) | sifr (Arabic) |
| १ | 1 | éka (एक) | echad (Hebrew) |
| २ | 2 | dvi (द्वि) | dva (Russian) |
| ३ | 3 | tri (त्रि) | tre (Italian) |
| ४ | 4 | chatúr (चतुर्) | katër (Albanian) |
| ५ | 5 | panch (पञ्च) | penki (Lithuanian) |
| ६ | 6 | ṣáṣh (षष्) | seis (Spanish) |
| ७ | 7 | saptá (सप्त) | şapte (Romanian) |
| ८ | 8 | aṣhṭá (अष्ट) | astoņi (Latvian) |
| ९ | 9 | náva (नव) | nove (Italian) |
Since Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, it is obvious (as also seen from the table) that the words for numerals closely resemble those of Greek and Latin. The word "Shunya" for zero was translated into Arabic as "صفر" "sifr", meaning 'nothing' which became the term "zero" in many European languages from Medieval Latin, zephirum (Arabic: sifr).
Read more about this topic: Indian Numerals
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“Watt’s need of semantic succour was at times so great that he would set to trying names on things, and on himself, almost as a woman hats.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)