Cyrillic numerals
The Cyrillic numerals are a numeral system derived from the Cyrillic script, developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the late tenth century. It was used by the First Bulgarian Empire and by South and East Slavic peoples. The system was used in Russia as late as the early 18th century when Peter the Great replaced it with Arabic numerals. The Cyrillic numerals may still be found in books written in the Church Slavonic language.
General description
The system is quasidecimal, basically the Ionian numeral system written with the corresponding graphemes of the Cyrillic script. The order is based on the original Greek alphabet and does not correspond to the different standard Cyrillic alphabetical orders. A separate letter is assigned to each unit (1, 2,... 9), each multiple of ten (10, 20,... 90) and each multiple of one hundred (100, 200,... 900).
The numbers are written as pronounced in Slavonic, generally from high value position to low value position, with the exception of 11 through 19, which are pronounced and written units before tens. For example, 17 is "семнадсять", "s'em'-na-d's'at'" ("seven-on-ten", compare English seven-teen). To cipher a Cyrillic number, one has to add all the figures. To distinguish numbers from text, a titlo ( ҃ ) is drawn over the numbers. If the number exceeds 1000, the thousands sign ( ҂ ) is drawn before the figure, and the thousands figure are written with a letter assigned to the units. To produce larger numbers, a numeral can be enclosed in a modifying sign: a ten-thousands sign ( ⃝ ), a hundred-thousands sign ( ҈ ), a millions sign ( ҉ ), a ten-millions sign ( ꙰ ), a hundred-millions sign ( ꙱ ) or a billions sign ( ꙲ ).
