Hindu–Arabic numeral system system is based upon ten (originally nine) different glyphs. The symbols (glyphs) used to represent the system are in principle independent of the system itself. The glyphs in actual use are descended from Brahmi numerals and have split into various typographical variants since the Middle Ages. These symbol sets can be divided into three main families: Western Arabic numerals used in the Greater Maghreb and in Europe, Eastern Arabic numerals (also called "Indic numerals") used in the Middle East, and the Indian numerals used in South Asia. The Hindu-Arabic numerals were invented by mathematicians in India. Perso-Arabic mathematicians called them
Chinese numerals "per se". Since it reflects spoken language, it does not use the positional system as in Arabic numerals, in the same way that spelling out numbers in English does not. There are characters representing the numbers zero through nine, and other characters representing larger numbers such as tens, hundreds, thousands and so on. There are two sets of characters for Chinese numerals: one for everyday writing, known as "xiǎoxiě" (), and one for use in commercial or financial contexts, known as "dàxiě" (). The latter arose because the characters used for writing numerals are geometrically simple, so simply using those