etymology - Why is the word 'number' abbreviated to 'No.' in UK English and '#' in American English?


Why the disparity? And why use 'No.'? Is it from the French?


And the hash or pound sign seems a weird choice too, is there a history or any reason involved?



Answer



No. comes from the abbreviation of "numero", ablative case of the Latin "numerus"


Also, # was used in America for an interesting reason:



In the United States, the symbol is traditionally called the pound sign or the number sign. The pound name derives from a series of abbreviations for pound, the unit of weight. At first "lb." was used; however, printers later designed a font containing a special symbol of an "lb" with a line through the verticals so that the lowercase letter "l" would not be mistaken for the numeral/digit "1". Unicode character U+2114 (℔) is called the "L B bar symbol", and it is a cursive development of this symbol. Ultimately, the symbol was reduced for clarity as an overlay of two horizontal strokes "=" across two forward-slash-like strokes "//"1



The # in America ultimately became used for numbering everything, not just in weight, but in any quantity.


The reason the # wasn't used as a numbering sign in England was because the pound in England was denoted by the (£) sign, so # wasn't used to avoid confusion.


1 The above was taken from here


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