[GNC] [OT] Why is Debit abbreviated Dr?

[Colin Law]

Wow, well now we know (or actually don't know), but we know we don't
know in great depth and detail :)

Colin
On Wed, 5 Sep 2018 at 16:01, David Cousens <davidcousens at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> Derek
>
> Latin past participles of creditum and debitum are debere and credere are a possible explanation. Another theory is the
> Dr stands for debit record and Cr credit record. Another is that Dr is from debtors and Cr is from creditors. I favour
> the first because Luca Pacciola who is often attributed (wrongly) with the first known  treatise in 1494 (Summa de
> Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita) which had a section on double entry accounting  and formulated
> the first documented use of the accounting equation used the terms debere (to owe) and credere (to entrust) to describe
> the two sides of the basic accounting equation but there is also  evidence that Pacciola used Per (from) and A (to) in
> journal entries. I don't know if any originals of Pacciola's original treatise have survived and most of the comments
> are from an English translation in 1633 where Handson used Dr from the English debtor. Another translator Geejsbeek in
> 1914 suggested Dr comes from "in dare" (give) and "in havere" (receive). Pacciola apparently learned his accounting from
> Arab traders in North Africa where his father was a merchant.  Benedikt Kotruljevic in 1458 also described double entry
> accounting in a 1458 work on the Art of Trade published in Dubrovnik. I suspect both were describing methodology used by
> the Arab traders.There is also evidence that double entry might have been used in 10th century Muslim tax office but
> there is no definitive evidence. We will probably never know where the usage of the notation actually came from and the
> historians will continue to argue about it forever.
> David Cousens
>
>
>
> On Wed, 2018-09-05 at 09:59 -0400, Derek Atkins wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I'm an Engineer by training; I've picked up a ton of accounting
> > knowledge just by being involved here for the past few decades, but
> > there's one thing I've seen recently that I honestly don't underdstand
> > and would appreciate if a CPA or Accounting Historian could answer.
> >
> > Specifically, I've seen people show a transaction as:
> >
> >     Dr ...  /  Cr ...
> >
> > So CR as an abbreviation for Credit makes sense to me (CRedit).  But why
> > is Debit abbreviated as DR?  There is no "R" in DEBIT.  So where does
> > that come from?  I would have expected it to be "Db".
> >
> > Just curious.
> >
> > -derek
> >
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information.
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.