Re: Paper on the (misnaming) of the Hangzhou numerals in ISO/IEC 1064

From: Doug Schiffer (laotzu@dreamscape.com)
Date: Mon Mar 06 2000 - 00:35:00 EST


Tom Emerson wrote:

> > A while back I became interested (obsessed) with the origin of the name
> > "Hangzhou" associated with a range of code points in Unicode. After much
> > digging, and with a little help from my friends, I've found, with quite a
> > degree of certainty, that they are missnamed, and that they should be
> > called the "Suzhou" numerals. The paper referenced in the URL below
> > presents this evidence.

To your excellent article, I can add the following reference: The Giles
Dictionary ("A Chinese-English Dictionary", 2nd Ed. Shanghai, 1912)
has the following entries under Table VI a (pg 33):
===============================================
Commonly used for accounts. Are said to be of Graeco-Bactrian origin, but are
known to the Chinese as (hanzi: Su1 Zhou1 Zi4 or Ma3 Zi4) Soochow or business
characters.....
===============================================

> >
> > http://cymru.basistech.com/~tree/papers/Hangzhou.pdf
> >
> > You probably need Acrobat Reader 4 to view this. If you have trouble
> > viewing it, please let me know. It displays fine on the system I built it
> > on.



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