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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兆 | zhào

In Mandarin Chinese, 兆 (Pinyin: zhào) is a word for “sign” or “omen”. In Mainland China, it also means “million” (i.e. 10⁶), as in 兆瓦 (zhào wǎ), “megawatt”. However, in Japanese the very kanji 兆 stands for “trillion”, i.e. “million million” (this meaning is now obsolete in Mainland China).

Alternative, and less ambiguous, way of expressing the number 10⁶ is 百万 / 百萬 (bǎiwàn), that is, 百 “hundred” by 万 “ten thousand”. Alternative way of expressing the number 10¹² is 亿万 / 億萬 (yìwàn), i.e. 亿 (10⁸) by 万 (10⁴). In Mainland China, 太 (tài) is used as prefix “tera-” (10¹²).

According to Uncle Hanzi, 兆 originally represented “the cracks in oracle bones caused by fire which were thought to be signs (omens) of the future”.

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