Talk:Greek numerals

Attic numerals
I'm using a Unicode (utf8) MSIE browser and not all of the characters are displaying correctly. Does someone know what the symbols are and can they correct them to work with standard characters? comment by Special:Contributions/71.139.23.245, 21:22, 17 April 2006


 * The Attic numerals for 5, 50, 500, 5000, 50000 are not rendered correctly. I think images should be used until wider support for these characters is available.  These images could eitehr replace the characters inline, or be a separate summary image of all the numerals.
 * —DIV (128.250.80.15 (talk) 00:37, 6 February 2009 (UTC))


 * I am duplicating the French ref for Linear A and B for the Attic numerals as well, because images of both are present in it. That ref has individual images of them, but they're probably covered by Copyright, so cannot be used here. — Joe Kress (talk) 03:23, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Edit: This wasn't displaying for me, 2021-01-04, Google Chrome Browser, Microsoft OS, Desktop, Laptop, Non-mobile. I don't know what's supposed to be displayed, but I'm looking at empty boxes where there should be some visual representation of a historical character.

The Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations' Linear A and Linear B alphabets used a different system, called Aegean numerals, which included specialised symbols for numbers: 𐄇 = 1, 𐄐 = 10, 𐄙 = 100, 𐄢 = 1000, and 𐄫 = 10000.[1] --Clinchicus (talk) 05:48, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

"extended by using obsolete letters"
From the article: ''This requires 27 letters, so the 24-letter Greek alphabet was extended by using three obsolete letters: digamma (ϝ, also used are stigma ϛ or στ) for 6, qoppa (ϟ) for 90, and sampi (ϡ) for 900. See Numerals: Stigma, Koppa, Sampi.''

Isn't this somewhat reverse? I'd think the numeral system retained three letters that have since gone obsolete in Greek, no? —Muke Tever talk 01:42, 2 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The three characters were already obsolete in classical Greek as letters or were used only in restricted dialects or locations during classical times. See the reference cited in the article Numerals: Stigma, Koppa, Sampi and Greek alphabet. — Joe Kress 04:15, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

numeral vs number
A number is an abstract entity that represents a count or measurement, whereas a numeral is a symbol or group of symbols that represents a number. Therefore, "numeral" is the correct title for this article. A n d r e a s   (T) 01:52, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

modern Greek
The line "In modern Greek, upper case is preferred" is the first I knew this is still used. How widespread is it? Is it like Roman numerals in latin-alphabet countires, just a veneer of antiquity not used for serious maths or arithmetic? jnestorius(talk) 22:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
 * The Greek numerals are used in modern Greek texts approximately to the same extent and in the same context as Roman numerals are used in texts written with the Latin alphabet. For example, they are used exclusively for royalties, for chapters in books, etc. The use of Lower-case letters, however, is very rare. Roman numerals are rarely used.

Examples from the Greek WP and Wikisource:
 * Kings of Macedonia: Βασιλείς της Μακεδονίας
 * Chapters of a novel: Η_Φόνισσα

A n d r e a s   (T) 01:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)


 * They are used generally as ordinal numbers. Names of kings, chapters in a book, but also for instance school classses. Thus, first grade would be Α' τάξη. Roman numerals are very rarely used in Greek, mostly in an academic context. Greek numerals are deffinitely not used for computations, excepting numerology, which seems to be a trend in Greek mystico-nationalistic circles. Note however that your average Greek would only easily recognise Greek numerals up to 6 (the number of grades in primary school), or in the best case 8 (the number of academic semesters). Anything higher than that would require some contemplation to recognise, and anything above 29 would cause much consternation even to your average philologist. Any knowledge of Roman numerals is even more limited, naturally. Another indication that Greek numerals are muchly a dead piece of tradition in Greece is that "Κωνσταντίνος Β'" would be literally pronounced as "Constantine B (the letter)" by most people, rather than "Constantine the Second". That is to say, they fully understand the intended meaning is "the second", but still pronounce the letter alphabetically rather than read it out as a numeral. Druworos 09:28, 28 September 2007 (UTC)


 * They are used in the 1904 Patriarchal Edition of the Greek New Testament - this is Koine, not modern Greek, but it is a widely-used, relatively modern edition of the New Testament that still uses these numbers. 24.211.251.205 (talk) 20:12, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Ambiguation?
"For example, 2006 is represented as ͵βϛʹ (2000 + 6)." How did they made a difference between e.g. 950 001 and 900 051? Was it both ͵ϡναʹ?129.206.26.17 10:39, 28 September 2007 (UTC) From the example given in the Greek version of this exact article, the answer seems to be that they simply use a space between the numerals. 950,001 would be ͵ϡν αʹ, while 900,051 would be ͵ϡ ναʹ. - Misha 216.254.12.114 (talk) 19:38, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Limitation of large numbers
I thought Ancient Greek did not have words for higher numbers than tens of thousands. This lead to profound difficulty to imagine large numbers. Archimedes eventually solved the problem by inventing exponentiation. Anyone who can verify this?

2009-03-10 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

Alternate name ref
[Moved from User talk:Joe Kress.] Why did you remove my reference? Languagehat (talk) 22:05, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Your ref was from a Wikipedia mirror, Slider.com, which copied it from Wikipedia. The equivalent Wikipedia article is here as it appeared on 15 October 2005 before a merge tag was added in January 2006 and redirected to this article. The alternate name, Ionian numerals, should have been added to this article at that time. I removed your ref because a Wikpedia article cannot be a reference for another Wikipedia article as it is not a reliable source. — Joe Kress (talk) 23:43, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Gotcha -- thanks, and now I know better! Languagehat (talk) 13:38, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Capital letters
Capital letters were certainly used as numbers in antiquity as well, for instance when coins were dated. Like on Seleucid coins.

I think they should be added as well. Sponsianus (talk) 09:57, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Zero and seventy
If by Byzantine times zero was written exactly as omicron, and the old notation is still used to this day, how would one distinguish the omicron for 70 from omicron for zero? Wouldn't it be grounds for confusion? 75.85.81.0 (talk) 12:06, 3 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The Byzantine zero was only used when copying Hellenistic astronomical works with sexagesimal notation, where the largest allowable number in any sexagesimal position was 59 (νθʹ), thus omicron must mean zero, not seventy. Compare this with our decimal notation, where the largest allowable number is any decimal position is 9. — Joe Kress (talk) 02:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Spam watch
Be on the lookout for spamming on this page. I just edited the statement "It came from Mars." from the "History" section of the article. mast3rlinkx (talk) 22:38, 10 November 2009 (UTC)


 * That was vandalism, not spam. I had to revert further back because the same IP editor added Mars as a link in See also. — Joe Kress (talk) 02:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

These are known as byzantine
In Greece, this type of numeration is called Byzantine numbering. Fix it. Kthxbye. 195.10.10.180 (talk) 16:51, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Do you have a source for that? I thought they pre-dated the Byzantine era. -- Radagast3 (talk) 21:18, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Upper-case / Lower-case
Greek minuscule letters weren't invented until the 6th century CE, at the *earlierst*. It seems strange (incorrect) to use them for the whole article on ancient Greek numerals...64.134.229.227 (talk) 22:54, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I am also mystified! Actually the Greek minuscule was introduced later, in the first half of the ninth century, in Constantinople (see Jean-Robert Armogathe et al., Histoire générale du christianisme. Volume I: des origines au XV-e siècle, 2010, p. 744).--Gerard1453 (talk) 16:49, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

some letters in TeX
The versions of TeX used by Wikipedia now include the archaic letters $$\stigma\,$$ (stigma) and $$\koppa\,$$ (koppa):

\alpha\beta\gamma\delta\varepsilon\stigma\zeta\eta\vartheta\iota\kappa\lambda\mu\nu\xi\omicron\pi\koppa\varrho\sigma\tau\upsilon\varphi\chi\psi\omega\, $$ The precise appearance of these may depend on whether you're using mathJax or not.

I created the table below for use in the article titled Ptolemy's table of chords. It doesn't go beyond 100 because no numbers bigger than 180 are needed there.

\begin{array}{|rlr|rlr|rlr|} \hline \alpha & \mathrm{alpha} & 1 & \iota & \mathrm{iota} & 10 & \varrho & \mathrm{rho} & 100 \\  \beta & \mathrm{beta} & 2 & \kappa & \mathrm{kappa} & 20 & & & \\  \gamma & \mathrm{gamma} & 3 & \lambda & \mathrm{lambda} & 30 & & & \\  \delta & \mathrm{delta} & 4 & \mu & \mathrm{mu} & 40 & & & \\  \varepsilon & \mathrm{epsilon} & 5 & \nu & \mathrm{nu} & 50 & & & \\  \stigma & \mathrm{stigma\ (archaic)} & 6 & \xi & \mathrm{xi} & 60 & & & \\  \zeta & \mathrm{zeta} & 7 & \omicron & \mathrm{omicron} & 70 & & & \\  \eta & \mathrm{eta} & 8 & \pi & \mathrm{pi} & 80 & & & \\  \vartheta & \mathrm{theta} & 9 & \koppa & \mathrm{koppa\ (archaic)} & 90 & & & \\  \hline \end{array} $$ Michael Hardy (talk) 17:31, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Largest writable value?
What is the largest writable value using Greek numerals?

I am not an expert but using the rules as presented here, it appears that:
 * ͵θʹ = 9,000
 * ͵ϟʹ = 90,000
 * ͵ϡʹ = 900,000

DMahalko (talk) 01:14, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

GNLS stacking?
Does the "Greek Lower Numeral Sign" (GLNS) stack?

If GLNS stacking is permitted then:
 * 9,000,000,000,000,000,000 = ͵͵͵͵͵͵θʹ

DMahalko (talk) 01:14, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

GNLS, applied per character or group?
Also, from the syntax described in this article, it is unclear to me if the GLNS applied per letter over 900, or if it is applied to letters in groups of three. Does ͵ϡ͵ϟ͵θʹ or ͵ϡϟθʹ equal 999,000 ?

If GLNS sign stacking is not permitted then it looks like the largest single writable value (without the Myriad) is (assuming the GLNS is used per digit) -- ͵ϡ͵ϟ͵θϡϟθʹ = 999,999 DMahalko (talk) 01:14, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * There is no indication in the references that the GLNS was used beyond one extra digit - if it was there would be ambiguities and duplications. I propose to make the following change unless counter-evidence can be found:
 * To represent numbers from 1,000 to 9,999 the letters α-θ are reused to serve as thousands. A "left keraia" (Unicode U+0375, ‘Greek Lower Numeral Sign’) is put in front of thousands to distinguish them from the standard use. For example, 2011 is represented as ͵βιαʹ (2000 + 11).
 * It would then follows that beyond 10,000 the Myriad notation has to be used. As currently phrased there would be no way to indicate whether ͵ριαʹ represents 110,001 or 100,011 (an there would be redundant ways of expressing numbers from 10,000 to 999,999).--Keith Edkins ( Talk ) 19:07, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

WP:ERA
Per WP:ERA, this edit established the page's usage as AD / BC and, pending a new consensus, that should be consistently maintained. Thanks. — Llywelyn II   05:04, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

M
The article on sampi is very well done and sourced and clearly states that the Greek letters placed over an M-looking symbol (really a variant san or sampi, not mu) are being multiplied by 1000, not 10&thinsp;000. Accordingly, I've removed this text from the article: To represent greater numbers, the Greeks also used the myriad from the old Attic numeral system in their notation. Its value is 10,000; the number of myriads was written above its symbol ($\overline{M}$). For example,
 * $$\stackrel{\delta\phi\pi\beta}{\overline{\Mu}}\overline{\psi\theta} = 4582\times 10,000+709 = 45,820,709. \, $$

Other forms are also possible. When that didn't suffice, the "myriad myriad" (one hundred million, written $\overline{ΜΜ}$) was used. The source here was very good as well (... in fact, it contains additional information about alternate systems and specifics that should be added to clarify some of the questions above) but I'd really like some direct clarification of when M is 40, 900, 1000×X, or 10000×X rather than just putting everything together with no explanation at all.

Was the myriad M just written larger? Was the Upsilon sometimes included over it important? Was the sampi m (×1000s) only a regional thing or very limited in time? etc... — Llywelyn II   09:49, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I think that sampi is a precursor form of GNLS. I would like to restore the paragraph because Ancient Greek mathematicians used myriad system due to their language, not thousand system, although their notations may be slightly different (i.e., Diophantus used a dot instead of M according to ) Na4zagin3 (talk) 15:30, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Symbols do not display
Although most of the non-Latin characters show properly there are a few, such as in the first sentence of the History Section of the main Article, that appear on my PC as little rectangles. Is this a problem with my setup, or with the way the text has been coded? --DStanB (talk) 15:51, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Observation reproduced, here is what I see in the first sentence of the History Section:



Hristo kirov (talk) 10:02, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The text is coded correctly; it's just that the fonts used on your system do not include the necessary characters. Copying and pasting such characters into Google will usually bring up websites that show them as graphics, such as FileFormat. Double sharp (talk) 13:05, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Isopsephy (Gematria)
I added... The art of assigning Greek letters also being thought of as numerals and therefore giving words/names/phrases a numeric sum that has meaning through being connected to words/names/phrases of similar sum is called isopsephy (gematria). - The Decoder 50.153.106.162 (talk) 18:15, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

'''ELLAIVARIOS ECHETLEUS ZEURAGOS (talk) 11:42, 4 October 2020 (UTC) regarding the above comment and addition for whomever made it, and to the moderators.

I am a Classics Academic. This is misinformation being propagated by popular culture in modern Greece today, spread around in conspiracy circles, and has taken hold in recent years, popularized by quacks and crackpots. The Hellenes never used "Gematria". This is a Jewish and Egyptian magical system, and therefore the mention in this section is inaccurate. Gematria assigns numbers to each letter, and tries to equate the sum of numbers of a word to the sum of numbers of another word or phrase, and then based on such "equation" it tries to assert that there is a predictive correlation in the meaning of the two words, or between word and phrase, i.e. the word "egg" might have a number sum of 965, and the word "sphere" might also have a number sum of 965, so the egg somehow also "reveals" its spherical shape. Entire phrases may also be equated to words, and vice versa. Gematria was often used to predict the future, i.e. if your name happened to be "Mara" and its number sum value was 456, and your name equated with the numeric sum of the phrase "Tony loves you", then Mara could be certain that her love for Tony would be reciprocated.

However, this was a Jewish and Egyptian magical practice, and not Greek. Isopsephy and Gematria are not the same. The Greeks used the notion of isopsephy for poetry but not with predictive magical purposes. Isopsephy means that "the digits are equal", and was used to balance one line or stanza in a poem with another, so that they would have an equal number value (since Greek letters were also numbers) with another line or stanza in that poem, in addition to having the correct meter, rhyme, etc. This made writing the poem especially challenging, as combining all aspects (isopsephy, meter, rhyme, line word count, etc.) limited the ability of choices one could have in order to "make things work" for the poem, so only the most skilled poets could do this. In the Hellenistic times, this practice took off. There is a famous example of this with a poem marking the death stela of a young boy in Asia Minor who passed away prematurely, and whose father erected the stela with one of the boy's best poems, making sure to indicate the isopsephy overtly in order to show what a greatly skilled poet the young boy was. The Greek isopsephy served entirely different purposes from Gematria (i.e. no properties of magical predictive "equations"), and was limited almost exclusively to poetry.

Magical Papyri in Oxyrhynchos confirm that the Greeks did not use Gematria, but that this was a Jewish and Egyptian magical practice syncretism. The furthest you might be able to stretch this, if you still want to make an inclusion in this wiki page, is to say, at most, that in "the Hellenistic times the Egyptians and Jews may have occasionally used Greek numerals to perform magical Gematria, given the ubiquity of the use of the Greek language at the time", and that's that. Isopsephy does not belong in this section, and should not be conflated with Gematria. The similarity stops with "one letter representing one number".

The addition of this section is misleading, as it does not have any sources, and none will ever be found other than popular modern speculations circulated in clown-publication magazines that are wishywashy, and re-interpret anything cherrypicked out of ancient sources.''' ELLAIVARIOS ECHETLEUS ZEURAGOS (talk) 11:42, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Ptolemy
According to Nobbe's edition, Ptolemy used a different system in his Geography. Apparently, rather than expressing the fractional part as multiples of 1/60, he composited the fractions from increasingly smaller partial fractions, like this:

λ̄ε 𐅵' γ' ιβ' = 30 + 5 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/12 = 35 + 55/60 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.114.146.117 (talk) 11:25, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

keraia symbol (U+0374, &#x0374;) vs. modifier letter prime symbol (U+02B9, ʹ)
Nowhere in the article can the symbol for keraia, U+0374, ʹ, be found. The symbol used in the article is ʹ, U+02B9, modifier letter prime. Is this intentional? - Leen 94.215.76.74 (talk) 11:15, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
 * It seems that somehow the symbol for keraia, &#x0374; is converted to &#x02B9;. After submitting the above paragraph, I checked and the symbol I used was changed. In this paragraph I used HTML-entity encoding, &amp;#x0374;, and thus has the correct symbol. - Leen 94.215.76.74 (talk) 11:26, 18 May 2017 (UTC)


 * This was still the case in the article as of just now. (I also took the liberty to do the same change in the above posts.) &mdash; Sebastian 15:12, 27 February 2018 (UTC)


 * U+0374 canonically decomposes to U+02B9 (in other words, the two are fully equivalent, as far as Unicode is concerned; unfortunately, not all fonts respect the equivalence). I guess the wiki software normalizes all input to the NFC (the preferred form for the WWW). 91.230.17.46 (talk) 13:28, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

External links modified
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Ambiguity in fraction and general number distinction
Hi, I'm pretty new to Wikipedia editing and nowhere close to an expert on this topic, but lately I've been reading this and similar articles extensively for detailed information (among other sources, of course). I found that there was no information on what was used for fractions in modern use of the system, and little explanation of how numbers are distinguished from letters in ancient vs. modern usage.

For example, what may be useful is something like the following: In antiquated usage of the system, numerals are marked with an overbar and use an upper keraia (prime) to mark fractions. In modern usage, numerals are marked with a prime and fractions are marked with a double prime. (http://www.opoudjis.net/unicode/numerals.html in the Keraia section near the bottom)

Apologies if this is incorrectly formatted or I somehow missed something, but I thought it was worth suggesting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zedseven7 (talk • contribs) 01:30, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Music composer perry Mason hbo
Music 69.142.45.128 (talk) 23:34, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Boys too men 49.179.60.58 (talk) 16:34, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

In-between numbers?
Is is not immediately clear from the text how numbers between those for which specific symbols would be notated.

For example, notation is shown for digits from 1-9, and for 10. How would one write "11"? Would it just be two copies of the digit for "1", or would it be like Roman numerals, with the symbol for "10" followed by the symbol for a "1"? Or something else entirely?

How about for "12"? "1" followed by "2"? Or "10" followed by "2"? Or "10" followed by "1" and another "1"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.253 (talk) 23:50, 6 December 2023 (UTC)