Bob_Hallissy@... wrote:

>
> Perhaps someone could shed some light on this for me...
>
> When I was a young lad in school (in America), the numbers we wrote were
> called "Arabic numerals" -- I presume in order to distinguish them from
> "Roman numerals". But these things we were taught to call Arabic numerals
> (i.e., Unicode U+0030 - U+0039) are not used by a some, if not many,
> peoples whose languages are written with Arabic script -- they favor what
> Unicode calls "Arabic-Indic Digits" (U+0660 - U+0669) or "Extended
> Arabic-Indic Digits" (U+06F0 - U+06F9)
>
> So a few questions:
>
> How did the term "Arabic numerals" come to be used for digits that aren't,
> well, Arabic?

Because Europe got them from the Arabs.

> Is this term still being taught? Just in America or elsewhere? Is there a
> better term?

That's the name. Our high school math teacher called them "Hindu-Arabic
numerals."

> Is there a traditional name for the group of digits starting with U+0660?

You wouldn't expect one in English, because English-speakers don't know
about them!
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...