Wow, well now we know (or actually don't know), but we know we don't know in great depth and detail :)
Colin On Wed, 5 Sep 2018 at 16:01, David Cousens <davidcous...@bigpond.com> wrote: > > Derek > > Latin past participles of creditum and debitum are debere and credere are a > possible explanation. Another theory is the > Dr stands for debit record and Cr credit record. Another is that Dr is from > debtors and Cr is from creditors. I favour > the first because Luca Pacciola who is often attributed (wrongly) with the > first known treatise in 1494 (Summa de > Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita) which had a section > on double entry accounting and formulated > the first documented use of the accounting equation used the terms debere (to > owe) and credere (to entrust) to describe > the two sides of the basic accounting equation but there is also evidence > that Pacciola used Per (from) and A (to) in > journal entries. I don't know if any originals of Pacciola's original > treatise have survived and most of the comments > are from an English translation in 1633 where Handson used Dr from the > English debtor. Another translator Geejsbeek in > 1914 suggested Dr comes from "in dare" (give) and "in havere" (receive). > Pacciola apparently learned his accounting from > Arab traders in North Africa where his father was a merchant. Benedikt > Kotruljevic in 1458 also described double entry > accounting in a 1458 work on the Art of Trade published in Dubrovnik. I > suspect both were describing methodology used by > the Arab traders.There is also evidence that double entry might have been > used in 10th century Muslim tax office but > there is no definitive evidence. We will probably never know where the usage > of the notation actually came from and the > historians will continue to argue about it forever. > David Cousens > > > > On Wed, 2018-09-05 at 09:59 -0400, Derek Atkins wrote: > > Hi All, > > > > I'm an Engineer by training; I've picked up a ton of accounting > > knowledge just by being involved here for the past few decades, but > > there's one thing I've seen recently that I honestly don't underdstand > > and would appreciate if a CPA or Accounting Historian could answer. > > > > Specifically, I've seen people show a transaction as: > > > > Dr ... / Cr ... > > > > So CR as an abbreviation for Credit makes sense to me (CRedit). But why > > is Debit abbreviated as DR? There is no "R" in DEBIT. So where does > > that come from? I would have expected it to be "Db". > > > > Just curious. > > > > -derek > > > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. > ----- > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.