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jackSo apparently a hundred used to be a hundred and twenty.
According to etymonline "hundred" came from Proto-Germanic "hunda-ratha", ultimately from Proto-Indo-European "km-tom", a shortening of "dkm-tom-", a suffixed form of "dekm-" meaning ten. Latin "centum" (where roman numeral C comes from) came from the same word.
But it sounds like in Proto-Germanic, the word mostly meant *twelve* tens. And then over the whole medieval period in Germanic-language speaking areas, it was used to mean "120" for some goods and "100" for others. Wikipedia says that "thousand" was also used meaning "1200".
Some sources delved through a bunch of medievel documents looking for examples and it sounded persuasive to me. One emphasised that it always seems to be twelve tens, people didn't seem to count twelve twelves. It seems like "120" and "100" were somewhat standardised, but there were also regional variations or a tendency to use similar terminology for any round number around that size.
English eventually started distinguishing these as "long hundred" and "short hundred", and surprisingly late (1800s?) parliament ordered that "hundred" be standardised as 100. Long and short persist in measures like "long ton" and "short ton", being 2200lb or 2000lb. Apparently based on 20 long hundredweights or 20 short hundredweights. Long ton or british ton is conveniently almost exactly 1000kg, which people now use as the metric tonne. North Americans may still use "ton" as a short ton.
I can't find any confirmation where "120" started. I assume that the PIE word meant "100". Does anyone know more?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_hundred (Especially look through the citations to short academic PDFs eg https://journals.socantscot.org/index.php/psas/article/view/9477)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_ton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredweight
According to etymonline "hundred" came from Proto-Germanic "hunda-ratha", ultimately from Proto-Indo-European "km-tom", a shortening of "dkm-tom-", a suffixed form of "dekm-" meaning ten. Latin "centum" (where roman numeral C comes from) came from the same word.
But it sounds like in Proto-Germanic, the word mostly meant *twelve* tens. And then over the whole medieval period in Germanic-language speaking areas, it was used to mean "120" for some goods and "100" for others. Wikipedia says that "thousand" was also used meaning "1200".
Some sources delved through a bunch of medievel documents looking for examples and it sounded persuasive to me. One emphasised that it always seems to be twelve tens, people didn't seem to count twelve twelves. It seems like "120" and "100" were somewhat standardised, but there were also regional variations or a tendency to use similar terminology for any round number around that size.
English eventually started distinguishing these as "long hundred" and "short hundred", and surprisingly late (1800s?) parliament ordered that "hundred" be standardised as 100. Long and short persist in measures like "long ton" and "short ton", being 2200lb or 2000lb. Apparently based on 20 long hundredweights or 20 short hundredweights. Long ton or british ton is conveniently almost exactly 1000kg, which people now use as the metric tonne. North Americans may still use "ton" as a short ton.
I can't find any confirmation where "120" started. I assume that the PIE word meant "100". Does anyone know more?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_hundred (Especially look through the citations to short academic PDFs eg https://journals.socantscot.org/index.php/psas/article/view/9477)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_ton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredweight
no subject
Date: 2026-05-06 01:24 pm (UTC)