亿 | yì

In Mandarin Chinese, 亿 (Pinyin: yì 🔊) is a word for “hundred million” (i.e. 10⁸) as well as, you may have guessed by now, “many”.

Alternative way of expressing the number 100 000 000 is 万万 / 萬萬 (wànwàn), i.e. 万 (wàn) “ten thousand” squared. However, 万万 is more often used as an adverb meaning “absolutely” or “certainly” (not).

亿 is a simplified form of the traditional hanzi 億. It is a phono-semantic compound of 亻, a radical form of our old friend 人 (“people”) and phonetic 意 (yì), which later got replaced by totally unrelated but similarly-sounding 乙 (yǐ). It looks like even in ancient times in China there was a firm association between “people” and “many” although, curiously, some historical forms of this character lack the radical 亻.

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