Suzhou numerals

The Suzhou numerals or huama is a numeral system used in China before the introduction of Arabic numerals.

[edit] History

The Suzhou numeral system is the only surviving variation of the rod numerals. Rod numeral system is a positional numeral system used by the Chinese in mathematics. The Suzhou numerals are a variation of the Southern Song rod numerals.

Suzhou numerals were used as shorthand in number-intensive areas of commerce such as accounting and bookkeeping. On the other hand, standard Chinese numerals were use in formal writing, akin to spelling out the numbers in English. Suzhou numerals were once popular in Chinese marketplaces, such as those in Hong Kong before 1990s, but it has gradually been supplanted by the Arabic numeral system. It is similar to Roman numerals which were used in ancient and medieval Europe for mathematics and commerce. Nowadays, the Suzhou numeral system is only used for displaying prices in Chinese markets or on traditional handwritten invoices.

[edit] Symbols

In the Suzhou numeral system, special symbols are used for digits instead of the Chinese characters. The digits of the Suzhou numerals are defined between U+3021 and U+3029 in Unicode.

The numbers one, two, and three are all represented by bars. This can cause confusion when they appear next to each other. Standard Chinese ideographs are often used in this situation so that they can alternate without causing ambiguities. For example, "21" is written as "〢一" instead of "〢〡" which can be confused with "3" (〣). The first character of such sequence are usually represented by the Suzhou numeral, while the second character is represented by the Chinese ideograph.

[edit] Notations

The digits are positional. The full numerical notations are written in two lines to indicate numerical value, order of magnitude, and unit of measurement.

The first line contains the numerical values, in this example, "〤〇〢二" stands for "4022". The second line consists of Chinese characters that represents the order of magnitude and unit of measurement of the first digit in the numerical representation. In this case "拾元" which stands for "ten yuan". When put together, it is then read as "40.22 yuan".

Possible characters denoting order of magnitude include:

• qiān (千) for thousand
• bái (百) for hundred
• shí (拾) for ten
• blank for one

Other possible characters denoting unit of measurement include:

• yuán (元) for dollar
• máo (毫) or (毛) for 10 cents
• xiān (仙) for 1 cent
• lǐ (里) for the Chinese mill
• any other Chinese measurement unit

Notice that the decimal point is implicit when the first digit is set at the ten position. Zero is represented by the character for zero (〇). Leading and trailing zeros are unnecessary in this system.

This is very similar to the modern scientific notation for floating point numbers where the significant digits are represented in the mantissa and the order of magnitude is specified in the exponent. Also, the unit of measurement, with the first digit indicator, is usually aligned to the middle of the "numbers" row.

[edit] Hangzhou misnomer

According to the Unicode standard version 3.0, these characters are incorrectly called Hangzhou style numerals. In the Unicode standard 4.0, an erratum was added which stated^[1]:

The Suzhou numerals (Chinese su1zhou1ma3zi) are special numeric forms used by traders to display the prices of goods. The use of "HANGZHOU" in the names is a misnomer.

All references to "Hangzhou" in the Unicode standard have been corrected to "Suzhou" except for the character names themselves, which cannot be changed once assigned, according to the Unicode Stability Policy.^[2] (This policy allows software to use the names as unique identifiers.)

[edit] References