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

[Geoff Jankowski]

David

I would love to agree with you but…..

In standard journal notation cr is a debt and dr an asset.  This is because it is nothing to do with credit (+ve) and debit (-ve) in any sense (or tense) but to do with a creditor (to whom we owe) and a debtor (who owes us).  Hence dr and cr relate to debtor and creditor and not to any form of debit or credit.

For example, if I take cash from the cash box and deposit it at the bank I enter a cr to the cashbook and a dr to the bank account. 

Totally counterintuitive which is why accountancy is a black art and should be banned.

I am also an engineer that has been a finance director for many years (but that does not necessarily give me the right to write what is right).



Geoff 
+44 20 7100 1092
+44 7770 58 48 38
+33 5 46 97 13 89
+33 6 22 93 00 53










> On 5 Sep 2018, at 17:08, Colin Law <clanlaw at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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.
> _______________________________________________
> 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.