Though it is not known whether this was his devising or common usage at the time, this is nonetheless called "Boethian notation". Although Boethius is the first author known to use this nomenclature in the literature, Ptolemy wrote of the two-octave range five centuries before, calling it the "perfect system" or "complete system" – as opposed to other, smaller-range note systems that did not contain all possible species of octave (i.e., the seven octaves starting from A, B, C, D, E, F, and G).