The Hindu-Arabic Numerals c8.54

c8.54

From *aṣ-ṣifr* has come *zephyr*, *cipher*, and finally the abridged form *zero*. The earliest printed work in which is found this final form appears to be Calandri's arithmetic of 1491,⁵ while in manuscript it appears at least as early as the middle of the fourteenth century.⁶ It also appears in a work, *Le Kadran des marchans*, by Jehan Certain,¹ written in 1485. This word soon became fairly well known in Spain² and France.³ The medieval writers also spoke of it as the *sipos*,⁴ and occasionally as the *wheel*,⁵ *circulus*⁶ (in German das *Ringlein*⁷), *circular* *note*,¹ *theca*,² long supposed to be from its resemblance to the Greek theta, but explained by Petrus de Dacia as being derived from the name of the iron³ used to brand thieves and robbers with a circular mark placed on the forehead or on the cheek. It was also called *omicron*⁴ (the Greek *o*), being sometimes written o or φ to distinguish it from the letter *o*. It also went by the name *null*⁵ (in the Latin books *nihil*¹ or *nulla*,² and in the French *rien*³), and very commonly by the name *cipher*.⁴ Wallis⁵ gives one of the earliest extended discussions of the various forms of the word, giving certain other variations worthy of note, as *ziphra*, *zifera*, *siphra*, *ciphra*, *tsiphra*, *tziphra*, and the Greek τζιφρα.⁶