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Comment by zelphirkalt | Hacker News Reader

Does "MM" usually stand for "million"? In German we have "Millionen" and then "Milliarden", but in English that is "Billion", so "MM" cannot stand for "Milliarden" either. And "Mega" already is *10^6, but only has 1 "M". So at first naturally I read "Million Million", but then thought: "What? There is no way they have that many accounts!"

It is a very confusing way to write the number and no explanation seems to fit, other than "There is a second 'M' to avoid clash with the company name '3M'.". Is that the explanation?

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45240304#45241147

  To represent one million in finance, the abbreviation “MM” is widely used. This notation originates from “mille mille,” meaning “thousand thousands” in Latin, equating to one million. This clarity makes “MM” a preferred choice in financial statements and reports.

I feel like the mille notation might have been usable before trillions started getting thrown around. Nowadays, k, M, B, and T seem like clearer suffixes than M, MM, MMM, and MMMM.

For this specific thread, 3MM also disambiguates 3M the company, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45240769

It is to avoid confusing with "M", mīlle -- Latin for "thousand". Quite common in financial world still.

I've worked in trading in NY, London, and Singapore for nearly 20 years and have never seen anyone actually write M to mean "thousands".

"Thousand" is always "k" or "K". "Million" is "M", "MM", "m", "mn", or "mln".

It comes from finance - the rest of us just use "M" for million. I believe it's from Roman numerals (MM = thousand * thousand).

The funny thing is, that MM in roman numerals means 2000.

I’m in finance and exclusively use the M and K to reference millions and thousands. Everyone says the MM is more accurate and I get that from a Roman numeral perspective it may be (if you ignore that it actually means 2000), yet I’ve never once encountered anyone using M as a thousand in the writing or reading of financial figures. I think it’s primarily a financial news, journalism/writing style, I rarely see it in business at all. Sometimes I see MM from the PE/banker guys and that’s about the only time I see it IRL.

Ok, I see where the "actually 2000" misconception would come from. A mile is 2000 steps, and "mile" comes from "mille".

But "mille" means 1000. Specifically, it was the distance covered by 1000 paces from a marching Roman soldier. It's more consistent to measure paces than steps in the face of left/right asymmetries, so it's the unit implied when you just say you're marching 1000.

MM literally translates to 2000 in Roman numerals and Roman numerals is always the reason provided for why MM is used for millions. I don’t see where mille or it’s history of steps gets into the picture at all, unless it’s the real reason for MM being million and everyone’s explanation is just wrong (they effectively don’t know why they’re using MM).

It still kind of reasons that if the idea for MM is to be more precise/clear than M, they’ve not done a very good job picking a clearer abbreviation.

Megameters, naturally

Just accounting nerds sniping normal people who try to express numbers, smh.

I say we just should go with engineer notation 3e6 is unambiguous. And say 100 million could be simple e8.

SI prefixes should always be preferred, as they're more widely understood and have consistency, but finance bros use M for "mille" instead, meaning thousand, when they should use K.

IIRC it’s Roman numerals for thousand thousands

Actual Roman numeral notation would be M̄. MM is 2000... And well M only came in middle ages. Romans would have used CIↃ...

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