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:
“I do not see why, since America and her autumn woods have been discovered, our leaves should not compete with the precious stones in giving names to colors; and, indeed, I believe that in course of time the names of some of our trees and shrubs, as well as flowers, will get into our popular chromatic nomenclature.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)