The Italian mathematician Fibonacci ( c. 1170 – c. 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.
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 Babylonians displayed zero with two angled wedges (middle). The Mayans used an eyelike character [top left] to denote zero. The Chinese started writing the open circle we now use for zero. The Hindus depicted zero as a dot.
Etymology. Our English word zero comes from the Arabic word sifr. It's the same Arabic root that gives us the word cipher, which can mean something that was done in secret.
"Zero and its operation are first defined by [Hindu astronomer and mathematician] Brahmagupta in 628," said Gobets. He developed a symbol for zero: a dot underneath numbers.
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 1299, zero was banned in Florence, along with all Arabic numerals, because they were said to encourage fraud.
Ancient Mesopotamia had a very simple numerical system. It used just two symbols: a vertical wedge (v) to represent 1 and a horizontal wedge (<) to represent 10. So <<vvv could represent 23. But the Mesopotamians had no concept of zero either as a number or as a place holder.
The Romans did not use numerals for calculations, so they did not have the need for a zero to hold a place or keep a column empty. The Roman numeral system was used for trade and they did not need to represent zero with a special symbol.
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.
The name Zero is primarily a male name of Greek origin that means Nothing, Empty.
About 773 AD the mathematician Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khowarizmi was the first to work on equations that were equal to zero (now known as algebra), though he called it 'sifr'. By the ninth century the zero was part of the Arabic numeral system in a similar shape to the present day oval we now use.
Having no zero would unleash utter chaos in the world. Maths would be different ball game altogether, with no fractions, no algebra and no calculus. A number line would go from -1 to 1 with nothing bridging the gap. Zero as a placeholder has lots of value and without it a billion would simply be “1”.
Moreover, If zero hadn't been discovered, we would have no algebra, no decimal system, no arithmetic, and most importantly — no computers! Even so, the significance of zero is seldom appreciated by us. We believe that its scope is limited just to mathematics.
The pronunciation zed is more commonly used in Canadian English than zee. English speakers in other Commonwealth countries also prefer the pronunciation zed.
“American speakers use zero in both conversation and writing. When reciting a string of numbers only, it is acceptable and common for an American to pronounce zero as 'oh. ' But when reciting a string that mixes characters and numbers, it becomes necessary to differentiate between 'oh' and zero.
Sifr evolved to mean zero when it was used to translate śūnya (Sanskrit: शून्य) from India. The first known English use of zero was in 1598.
While some Australian speakers would pronounce “no” as a diphthong, starting on “oh” as in dog and ending on “oo” as in put, others begin with an unstressed “a” (the sound at the end of the word “sofa”), then move to the “oh” and then “oo”.
"When you tell an Australian that there's an 'r' in the way we pronounce 'no' they're like 'Mmm… no, there's not,'" says Hume. That's because the Australian accent is non-rhotic, so an "r" isn't pronounced unless it comes before a vowel.
Occasionally you'll hear someone describe a person as a zero — which is a not-very-nice way to say that the person has nothing going for them.
After Dutch navigators charted the northern, western and southern coasts of Australia during the 17th Century this newly found continent became known as 'New Holland'. It was the English explorer Matthew Flinders who suggested the name we use today.