2751: Zero and Cipher Jul 2, 2024

The concept of zero was pretty revolutionary in math as a distinct place on the number scale, which is why its origins tend to be different to other numbers. The word ‘zero’ is from Arabic’s صِفْر (ṣifr), “nothing; empty”. The term was borrowed by Fibonacci to describe ‘zero’, but later the word was used for ‘cipher’, originally referring to any character, and was used to describe a variable in algebra before it gained the sense of disguised writing. 

It is not related to Hebrew’s ספירה (sfira) ‘counting’ / מספר (mispar) ‘number’, but did lead to the French “chiffre” ‘number’. It comes from صَفَر (Safar) the name of a month meaning ‘void’, though the exact reasons are unclear: referring to the state of houses, it either was a month when houses are empty ahead of the harvest (before Islam removed the leap months and thus seasonality of the calendar) or it was a time when raids were particularly common.