How come number is abbreviated No. instead of Nu.?

Question

my little cousin asked this-- my rep as all-knowing "elder" has been challenged. I can't lose face here :P
serious answers pls, it is a good question

Answer 1

Because the origin of the abbreviation isn't in English. French: nombre, and before that from Latin, though I think the Latin has a u not an o. We get it from the French (France invaded England at some point long ago). It's the same reason "pounds" is abbreviated lbs, and English has a lot of Latin-derived.words though it isn't technically a Romance language

Answer 2

A couple of clarifications:

1) The base (nominal case) form of Latin for "number" is actually "numerus". So whence "numero"? That's the "ablative" case. It is used here with the sense "in number".

Why the ablative? Because that's what fit the usage writers needed when they introduced the form into English in the 17th century -- in expressions of the sort "men, in number three".

(To explain "case" you can just say that words in some languages have special endings to tell you what they're doing in the sentence -- whether the word is the one doing the action, having something done to it, etc)

2) aski is SORT Of right -- the final letter is a superscript, but it is still the letter "o". So WHY a superscript? That's to indicate that this final letter IS a case ending (in this instance, for the ablative), not part of the root word.

This practice goes back many centuries. In fact, if very early copies of the Greek New Testament names of God and Jesus were often abbreviated with just the first letter or two of the root word PLUS the case ending with a line over it. Adding the ending made it clear how the word was functioning in the sentence (something we don't worry about in English, since we have hardly anything left of case, EXCEPT with pronouns he/him/his, she/her/hers, etc)
http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/NominaSacra.html

So why do we NOT use the superscript? Actually, there's still many contexts where you WILL find it, esp. on things that are handwritten of painted. But in the "typewriter era" you really could not do a superscript (at least until electronic typewriters can along), so most typed materials would just use a lower case "o". (There wasn't much of a problem with this, since it's unlikely people will be confused by it.)
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Finally, on the use of LATIN abbreviations for ENGLISH words -- This is left over from an era in which scholarly writing all across Europe was done in Latin. When writers started switching to English, the familiar Latin abbreviations for many words were still familiar, and very convenient.

But though we WRITE the Latin forms, we read them aloud (or SHOULD read them aloud) as English words. (In other words - for "e.g". say "for example"; for "i.e." say "that is"; for "viz." say "namely"; for "etc." say "and so forth"; for "lbs" say "pounds".)

Answer 3

It is the abbreviation of "numero", the origin of the word, coming from latin.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

Contrary to what people think the "o" thats following the "N" is not the letter "o" but a superscript "o" - so its "№" and not "No."

Read this link and explain your little cousin - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numero_sign

HTH,
Aski