Billion

Table of contents

1 English usage
2 Non-English usage
3 History
4 Uncertainty
5 Alternative approaches
6 See also
7 Sources

English usage

In most English-speaking countries today, for example: USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, one billion = 1 000 000 000 or 10⁹ or one thousand million: a one followed by nine zeros. One billion is thus equal to one thousand millions, or one thousandth of a trillion. (This is also the meaning of the word when used in English Wikipedia, though it is preferable to avoid the term altogether, for the reasons of ambiguity described here) The United Kingdom and Australia traditionally employed the usage of 10¹², but some years ago largely switched to the more common English version of 10⁹.

Non-English usage

In most other countries, a word similar to "billion" indicates 1 000 000 000 000, or 10¹² or one million millions. For example: French, Norwegian, Dutch biljoen, German Billion, Spanish billón, Italian bilione and Swedish billion or biljon. The value 10⁹ is called something similar to the English word "milliard" in these countries. For example, French and Norwegian milliard, Dutch miljard, German Milliarde, Spanish millardo, Italian miliardo, Polish miliard and Swedish miljard or milliard. (Spanish commonly uses "thousand million": mil millones.) Some non-English speaking countries are exceptions to the above rule and match the English usage. A Brazilian Portuguese dictionary indicates 10¹² = trilhão, 10⁹ = bilhão. Similarly, transliterating from Greek, 10¹² = trisekatommyrio, 10⁹ = disekatommyrio (see myriad).

History

In 1475, Jehan Adam recorded the words "bymillion" and "trimillion" (for 10¹² and 10¹⁸).
In 1484 the French mathematician Nicolas Chuquet in his article "Triparty en la science de nombres" [1] used the words byllion, tryllion, quadrillion, quyllion, sixlion, septyllion, ottyllion, and nonyllion. Robert Munafo has pointed out [1] that, oddly enough, there is one passage in which he is clearly using them to mean 10⁹, 10¹², etc. and a different passage in the same work where they clearly refer to 10¹², 10¹⁸, etc. Chuquet's work had little direct influence because his work was not published until the 1870s, but most of it was copied (without attribution) by Estienne de la Roche for a portion of his 1520 book, Larismetique.
Around 1550 Pelletier used the system based on powers of 10⁶, adding the term "milliard" for 10⁹. This system was used in England and Germany and part of the rest of Europe, but in France and in the USA a different system became established where the term billion signifies 10⁹.
Late 17th Century, modern non-English meaning derived from French, prefix bi- (twice) and -illion (from million). In imitation of one million million. Trillion: one million million million and so on.
In 1926, H. W. Fowler's Modern English Usage noted "It should be remembered that this word does not mean in American use (which follows the French) what it means in British. For to us it means the second power of a million, i.e. a million millions (1,000,000,000,000); for Americans it means a thousand multiplied by itself twice, or a thousand millions (1,000,000,000), what we call a milliard. Since billion in our sense is useless except to astronomers, it is a pity that we do not conform."
1948: the "Conférence des Poids et des Mesures" proposed to use the original Pelletier system in France.
1961: the "Journal Officiel" (the French official gazette) decided in favor of this proposal.
Some dictionaries recommend: "The terms billion, trillion, quintillion, quatrillion, quintillion and sextillion are to be avoided because of the ambiguity"
In 1974 British prime minister Harold Wilson abandoned the use of billion for 10¹², by explaining before the House of Commons the fact that "billion" from now on in British government statistics has the American use i.e. means 10⁹.
By 2000 the usage of 10⁹ for 1 billion was ubiquitous in the UK, and is taught in schools.

Uncertainty

Despite the above progression, there seems still to be uncertainty about this:

On one side, Graham Dane, a native English speaker, writes in the forum of the online dictionary LEO.org:

The term milliard is very rare in British English. Billion has meant thousand million in financial writings for many years now, and is almost universal in other fields. Anyone using billion to mean million million is likely to be misunderstood.

On the other side, in the FAQs of alt.usage.english (the part by Ken Moore) states:

Despite this, the U.S. meaning is still rare outside journalism and finance, its introduction having served merely to create confusion. Throughout the U.K., a common response to the question "What do you understand by 'a billion'?" would be: "Well, I mean a million million, but I often don't know what other people mean." Few schoolchildren are confident of the meaning, though, again, 10¹² seems to be preferred.

Alternative approaches

One alternative approach is to use SI prefixes, that is, "Giga" for 10⁹ and "Tera" for 10¹². However, this alternative is often only used with specific units that commonly have such magnitudes. An additional problem is that if the unit is a computing term, the term may be interpreted as being a power of 2 instead of a power of 10 (see Binary prefix for more information on one approach to avoiding this).

Sources

Non-English words: Pocket dictionaries from Collins (London), Oxford, and Kunnskapsforlaget (Oslo).

millardo: The Royal Spanish Academy web site