> In German, it is not and never was ambiguous I’m not sure about that ”and never was”. Mathematicians used to have fairly loose definitions for all kinds of t

> In German, it is not and never was ambiguous I’m not sure about that ”and never was”. Mathematicians used to have fairly loose definitions for all kinds of things and different fields sometimes have incompatible definitions for a term, so I think it’s not impossible “ganzzahlig” was used ambiguously for ℤ or ℕ (in- or excluding zero) for a while in some corners. When was the phrase “natural number” even invented? The best I can find is https://jeff560.tripod.com/n.html https://jeff560.tripod.com/n.html (via https://mathoverflow.net/questions/379699/origin-of-phrase-natural-number https://mathoverflow.net/questions/379699/origin-of-phrase-n...) which says “Chuquet (1484) used the term progression naturelle for the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.” There may well have been a time where “ganzzahlig” existed but “Natürliche Zahl” didn’t yet.