In around 500AD Aryabhata devised a number system which has no zero yet was a positional system. He used the word "kha" for position and it would be used later as the name for zero.
The first known English use of zero was in 1598. The Italian mathematician Fibonacci (c. 1170–1250), who grew up in North Africa and is credited with introducing the decimal system to Europe, used the term zephyrum. This became zefiro in Italian, and was then contracted to zero in Venetian.
Zero's origins most likely date back to the “fertile crescent” of ancient Mesopotamia. Sumerian scribes used spaces to denote absences in number columns as early as 4,000 years ago, but the first recorded use of a zero-like symbol dates to sometime around the third century B.C. in ancient Babylon.
We used roman numbers and word number before zero was invented.
The first modern equivalent of the numeral zero comes from a Hindu astronomer and mathematician Brahmagupta in 628. His symbol to depict the numeral was a dot underneath a number. He also wrote standard rules for reaching zero through addition and subtraction and the results of operations that include the digit.
Zero as a symbol and a value
The first time we have a record of zero being understood as both a symbol and as a value in its own right was in India. About 650 AD the mathematician Brahmagupta, amongst others, used small dots under numbers to represent a zero.
Etymology. From French zéro, from Italian zero, from Medieval Latin zephirum, from Arabic صِفْر (ṣifr, “nothing, cipher”), itself calqued from Sanskrit शून्य (śūnya, “void, nothingness”).
It goes back to typewriters from decades ago. There was no separate number key for zero—-you typed the capital letter “O” for zero.
Both are correct. But, zero is more formal than oh. Native speakers, both Americans and Brits, tend to use either of the forms. Limit the use of oh colloquially.
In Australia, it is popular to interchange "zero" for "o" when stating a phone number.
"Zero" is the usual name for the number 0 in English. In British English "nought" is also used. In American English "naught" is used occasionally for zero, but (as with British English) "naught" is more often used as an archaic word for nothing. "Nil", "love", and "duck" are used by different sports for scores of zero.
“In British English, zero is normally used only in scientific writing. In conversation, British speakers usually say 'nought,' or to a lesser degree, 'oh. '”
Zero is commonly used in a general way to mean none or nothing. Synonyms for this sense of the word include nil, naught, nought, and aught.
Q: Why do the British refer to 'zero' as a phrase that sounds like the word 'toon' spelled backwards? It is just a very old English word meaning the newer word 'nothing' in the English language. So, Nought or Nothing = nothing, and Zero = a Japanese aeroplane.
'2.0' is clearly a version number with a decimal point in it, and therefore it's self-evident that the separator between the two numbers is pronounced 'point'.
History of Zero in India
Earlier, zero was represented as a dot in mathematics and later when it reached Arab, an oval shape was given to the number that we today know as the '0' digit. This is the reason why zero belongs to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system.
“Zero” is zero in Italian and the “z” is pronounced “ds” or “ts” – dsee-roh.
The first recorded zero appeared in Mesopotamia around 3 B.C. The Mayans invented it independently circa 4 A.D. It was later devised in India in the mid-fifth century, spread to Cambodia near the end of the seventh century, and into China and the Islamic countries at the end of the eighth.
Factorial of a number in mathematics is the product of all the positive numbers less than or equal to a number. But there are no positive values less than zero so the data set cannot be arranged which counts as the possible combination of how data can be arranged (it cannot). Thus, 0! = 1.
Zero helps us understand that we can use math to think about things that have no counterpart in a physical lived experience; imaginary numbers don't exist but are crucial to understanding electrical systems. Zero also helps us understand its antithesis, infinity, in all of its extreme weirdness.
Zillion is not actually a real number; it's simply a term used to refer to an undetermined but extremely large quantity.
The name Zero is primarily a male name of Greek origin that means Nothing, Empty.