- zephyrus character and zero -

The word zero comes ultimately from the Arabic ṣifr (صفر) meaning empty or vacant, a literal translation of the Sanskrit śūnya meaning void or empty. Through transliteration this became zephyr or zephyrus in Latin. The word zephyrus already meant "west wind" in Latin; the proper noun Zephyrus was the Roman god of the west wind (after the Greek god Zephyros). With its new use for the concept of zero, zephyr came to mean a light breeze—"an almost nothing." 

As the decimal zero and its new mathematics spread through a Europe that was still in the Middle Ages, words derived from sifr and zephyrus came to refer to calculation, as well as to privileged knowledge and secret codes. According to Ifrah, "in thirteenth-century Paris, a 'worthless fellow' was called a... cifre en algorisme, i.e., an 'arithmetical nothing.'" The Arabic root gave rise to the modern French chiffre, which means digit, figure, or number; chiffrer, to calculate or compute; and chiffré, encrypted; as well as to the English word cipher. Today, the word in Arabic is still sifr, and cognates of sifr are common throughout the languages of Europe. A few additional examples follow.

* French: zéro, zero

* Catalan; xifra, digit, figure, cypher; zero, zero; xifrar, to encode, to number

* German: Ziffer, digit, figure, numeral, cypher

* Italian: cifra, digit, numeral, cypher; zero, zero

* Russian: tzifra, digit, numeral; shifr cypher, code

* Polish: cyfra, digit; szyfrować, to encrypt; zero, zero

* Portuguese: zero, zero; dígito, digit; número, number; algarismo, figure, numeral

* Spanish: cifra, figure, numeral, cypher, code; cero, zero

* Swedish: siffra, numeral, sum, digit; chiffer, cypher

* Dutch: cijfer, digit

In ancient India, the Indian scholar Pingala (circa 5th-3rd century BC), used binary numbers 0 and 1 in his binary system, to represent short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables), which makes it similar to Morse code. 

botticelli: primavera (chloris and zephyrus)