Origin of "zero"

Question

Dictionary.com gave the origin as:

1595–1605; < Italian < Medieval Latin zephirum < Arabic ṣifr cipher

I'm just wondering who coined the actual English term 'zero'? I know that sometime in history there was a man who achieved a mathematical breakthrough, and came up with the idea of 'zero', but who actually coined the word? Can somebody trace its etymology?

Answer 1

More than what was asked, but below is a near-copy of an etymological answer I left on math.SE a while ago, on the etymological origin of the words "zero", "cipher", and "nought". (Sources: Online Etymology Dictionary and Oxford English Dictionary.)

• zero: circa 1600, (either from Middle Latin zephirum, or French zéro or its source Italian zero, for *zefiro) in any case from Arabic sifr "cipher", itself a translation of Sanskrit śūnya "empty place, desert, naught".

• cipher: late 14th century, from Arabic sifr, "zero", literally "empty, nothing", from safara "to be empty", loan-translation of Sanskrit śūnya "empty". The word "cipher" came to Europe with Arabic numerals. Originally meant "zero", then "any numeral", then (c. 1520s) "coded message". OED: "The Arabic was simply a translation of the Sanskrit name śūnya, literally ‘empty’."

• nought: variant of naught which means "nothing". The meaning of "zero, cipher" is only from the early 15th century. (?c1425 Crafte Nombrynge in R. Steele The Earliest Arithmetics in English. (1922) 20: "A 0 is noȝt, And twyes noȝt is but noȝt.")

So these sources seem to agree that:

• In Sanskrit, the word for "empty" (śūnya) was used for zero.
• Correspondingly when translating into Arabic, the word sifr based on the word safara, meaning "to be empty", was used for zero.
• For the number in English, cipher and zero were imported from Arabic, but also, similar to the passing from Sanskrit to Arabic, the existing word for "nothing" (nought) was used.

Answer 2

From Leonardo Fibonacci's Liber Abaci (1202):

Novem figure indorum he sunt 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. Cum his itaque novem figuris, et cum hoc signo 0, quod arabice zephirum appellatur, scribitur quilibet numerus, ut inferius demonstratur.

The nine Indian figures are 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. With these nine figures and with the sign 0, that is called zephirum in Arabic, every number can be written, as I shall prove in what follows.

This is where zephirum comes from; it became zero in Italian. Probably, Leonardo used a Latin word as similar as possible to the Arabic one.

Answer 3

The concept of zero as a number and not merely a symbol for separation is attributed to India where by the 9th century AD practical calculations were carried out using zero, which was treated like any other number, even in case of division.[10][11] The Indian scholar Pingala (circa 5th-2nd century BC) used binary numbers in the form of short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables), making it similar to Morse code.[12][13] He and his contemporary Indian scholars used the Sanskrit word śūnya to refer to zero or void.

--copied from wikipedia

however it does not say Indians discovered it, it does says they were the practical users

The word "zero" came via French zéro from Venetian zero, which (together with cipher) came via Italian zefiro from Arabic صفر, ṣafira = "it was empty", ṣifr = "zero", "nothing".