Yi / Oku to Billions (short Scale) (yi to B)
1 yi / oku (East Asian) equals 0.1 billions (short scale) exactly.
How to convert yi / oku to billions (short scale)
To convert yi / oku to billions (short scale), multiply the number of yi / oku by 0.1. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply billions (short scale) by 10.
billions (short scale) = yi / oku × 0.1
Example: 10 yi / oku = 1 billion (short scale).
Large-number names differ around the world: this site uses the short scale (billion = 10⁹) by default, and lists the long-scale billion separately.
About these units
Yi / Oku (East Asian) (yi)
One hundred million (10⁸), written 億 / 亿 in Chinese and Japanese (oku) and Korean (eok). East Asian counting groups numbers by myriads.
Chinese counting does not group digits in threes. It groups them in fours, so 1,234,567,890 is read as 12 yi, 3456 wan, 7890. Wan is 10,000 and yi is 10,000 times wan, giving 100,000,000. In Japanese the same character is read oku and in Korean eok. The yi is therefore a pure number with no physical dimension, and its base here is simply one.
This myriad system differs from English, which builds on thousands. One million is 100 wan, and one billion in the short scale is 10 yi, since these languages have no native words for powers of one thousand. Ancient texts wrote 10,000 squared as wan wan before yi became the name. Older usage differed, and yi once stood for 10 to the 5th. The next unit, zhao, is 10 to the 12th in Taiwan, Japan and Korea, but mainland China has used it for a million, so official documents avoid it.
1 yi / oku (East Asian) = 100,000,000 pieces (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Chinese numerals; Wikipedia: Myriad
Billion (short Scale) (B)
One thousand million (10⁹). The meaning used in the US, UK and most English-speaking countries today.
For decades British and American speakers meant different things by billion. The short-scale sense, a thousand million, took hold in the United States in the 19th century, while Britain kept the older meaning of a million million. From the 1950s the short scale spread through British technical writing and journalism, and Winston Churchill had remarked in 1941 that for practical financial purposes a billion was a thousand millions.
The official break came on December 20, 1974. Asked in Parliament whether ministers would be required to use the traditional British meaning, Prime Minister Harold Wilson answered no, explaining that billion was now used internationally for 1,000 million and that using it any other way would cause confusion. He conceded it could still be read as a million million and asked colleagues to avoid ambiguity. Today a billion is 10⁹, matching the SI prefix giga, and the UN projected that world population would reach 8 billion on November 15, 2022.
1 billion (short scale) = 1,000,000,000 pieces (exactly).
Sources: Hansard, 20 Dec 1974: Billion (Definition), written answer; Wikipedia: Billion; United Nations: Day of Eight Billion
Related conversions
- Billions (short scale) to yi / oku (reverse)
- Yi / oku to pieces
- Yi / oku to dozens
- Yi / oku to lakhs
- Yi / oku to millions
- Yi / oku to crores
- Pieces to billions (short scale)
- Dozens to billions (short scale)
- Lakhs to billions (short scale)
- Millions to billions (short scale)
- Crores to billions (short scale)
- Pairs to billions (short scale)
- Hundred to billions (short scale)
- Gross to billions (short scale)
- Thousand to billions (short scale)
- Trillions (short scale) to billions (short scale)
- Score to billions (short scale)
- Half dozens to billions (short scale)
See all counting & quantity units.