The word million is a noun and defined as a number equal to 1,000 times 1,000. First used around the 14 century, the word million comes from the Old Italian word “milione” or great thousand, which comes from the Latin word for thousand “mille.”
There was no number for million in the Greek or Roman numeral system. In fact, the number million did not enter the European lexicon until the 14th century. However, by the 3rd century, mathematicians in India already had a numerical symbol for million and for numbers even higher. The Hindu–Arabic numeral system was invented by Indian mathematicians between the 1st and 4th century. As the system spread through Eurasia, it was adopted by Arabic mathematicians around the 9th century AD. It wasn’t until the Middle ages when the famous Italian mathematician Fibonacci popularized the Hindu-Arabic numeral system in Europe with his book Liber Abaci (Book of Calculation). In most English speaking countries the symbol for million includes two commas within the number “1,000,000.”
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