The paradoxical quantity zero entered English in 1604 as a borrowing from multiple languages: French zéro (est’d 1485), Spanish zero (est’d 1512, now cero), and their shared source, Italian zero. Italian zero descends from Medieval Latin zēphirum, which Fibonacci coined in 1202 as a borrowing of Arabic صِفْر (ṣifr), meaning “empty”. ṣ-f-r is the Arabic stem meaning “void”. The Arabic word ṣifr was coined in 976 as a calque of Sanskrit शून्य (śūnya), which also means “empty” or “void”. Śūnya was the word for zero when it was first invented, which you could argue was either Pingala’s usage of it as a binary digit in the Chandaḥśāstra around 200 BCE, or the Lokavibhāga’s usage it as a place-value decimal numeral in 458 CE.

The numeral zero was in use in England before 1604. Before zero, the numeral was called nil, a borrowing from Latin nīl, a clipping of nihil, meaning “nothing”. Scores of zero are still often called nil in Commonwealth sports. And before nil, the numeral was called cipher, a 1399 borrowing from French cyfre, meaning “zero”. French cyfre was also borrowed from Arabic صِفْر (ṣifr), more directly this time.

How did cipher drift from “zero” to its current meaning? The original sense referred to both the quantity zero, and the numeral that represents zero. Within a hundred years, cipher picked up a related sense meaning “any numeral”. By the 1500s, this sometimes further extended to “any symbol”, before settling on “a code replacing symbols with other symbols”, which we can now imagine generalizing to today’s meaning.

The numeral zero was of course in use in England in 1600, because it is required to have a place-value numeral systems. In those, the value of a numeral is determined by its relative position, so the single symbol “2” could mean both two million or two thousandths, depending on where it is placed. England had gradually transitioned from Roman numerals to Arabic numerals over the past few centuries, because of how much easier calculations were in Arabic numerals.

Medieval Italians tried to make complex accounting work in their heritage Roman numerals. But as Venice, Genoa, and Florence developed the first complex European economies, their accountants also adopted Arabic numerals for ease of use. Their source was Fibonacci’s description in his Liber Abaci (Latin for “Book of Calculation”). Islamic accountants had similarly adopted a place-value numeral system for their own complex accounting centuries ago.

Diagram illustrating the Brahmi numerals 1-9 and six of their descendants that influenced European digits, including Devanagari numerals and Western Arabic numerals. Diagram illustrating the Brahmi numerals 1-9 and six of their descendants that influenced European digits, including Devanagari numerals and Western Arabic numerals.

In Arabic, the numerals we use in English are called “European digits”. They are descended from a specific variant of Eastern Arabic numerals that Fibonacci encountered in Algeria. All of the numerals saw wide regional and temporal variation before their modern forms were set in metal by the printing press in the late 1400s.

Earlier, I described Pingala as having invented zero, rather than having discovered it. Whether math is invented or discovered is an age-old inconclusive debate, but I lean toward math notation being invented, even if the concepts they represent were discovered. The symbol for zero seems to be a clear example of notation to me.