Names of large numbers

Numbers that are larger than one million are usually either shown using scientific notation, or by words.^[1]

The words billion and trillion, and millions were first written to describe extremely large numbers in 1475 by Jehan Adam. In 1484, Nicolas Chuquet used the words million, billion, trillion, decillion, and even further to write and describe much larger numbers.^[2] For example, Adam's billion (Chuquet's (bi)llion) was used to write 10¹².^[3] While these were the first writings that used these words, Adam and Chuquet were probably not the creators of the words. The word million comes from the Old Italian millione.^[2][4] These words were most likely used a lot before the books were written.^[2]

(For "missing" numbers, like 10^26, say "100 Septillion")

There is also the number googol, which is a 1 with 100 zeros behind it (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), and the number googolplex, which is a 1 with a googol of zeros behind it, (10^{10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000}) (10¹⁰¹⁰⁰). The number googolplexian, is a 1 with a googolplex number of zeros behind it (10^1010100).

The name centillion was made in the 19th century for the 100th "illion", being 10³⁰³ in the short scale and 10⁶⁰⁰ in the long scale.

• Pointless Big Numbers
• Naming Large Numbers Archived 2022-08-11 at the Wayback Machine