The term imaginary was not chosen to be descriptive: > At the time, such numbers were poorly understood and regarded by some as fictitious or useless, much as

The term imaginary was not chosen to be descriptive: > At the time, such numbers were poorly understood and regarded by some as fictitious or useless, much as zero and the negative numbers once were. Many other mathematicians were slow to adopt the use of imaginary numbers, including René Descartes, who wrote about them in his La Géométrie, where the term imaginary was used and meant to be derogatory. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_number