4 ms·
M == thousand
by zests 6y ago
M == thousand
- lupire 6y agoThis is a false-cognate in MM. MM means millions, plural of M which means million.
- antonvs 6y agoSource? Every source I've seen says that MM is derived from the Roman numeral M, meaning thousand.
- remram 6y agoWouldn't that make MM 2,000, the same way II is 2 and XX is 20?
- antonvs 6y agoIt would be if it was interpreted as an actual Roman number. But in this case it's treated as M x M. The actual Roman version of a million is an M with a bar over it, where the bar means x1000. But that's not an ordinary character, so wouldn't work for this purpose.
- remram 6y agok = thousand, M = million, G = billion There is actually a standard for this. I'm fine with MM, it's confusing to me but not ambiguous, just please don't reassign existing prefixes...
- everybodyknows 6y agoM does happen to be the Roman numeral for “thousand” — as seen in the credits of old movies. But let’s not go there.