“Our numerals often are known as Arabic, despite the fact that they bear little resemblance to those now in use in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Arabia, Iran, and other lands within the Islamic culture. . . . We call our numerals Arabic because the principles in the two systems are the same and because our forms may have been derived from the Arabic. However, the principles behind the Arabic numerals presumably were derived from India; hence it is better to call ours the Hindu or the Hindu-Arabic system.”

—Carl B. Boyer, A History of Mathematics, 1968.