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

[Roger Miskowicz]

I thought that debit and credit only existed in double entry accounting and
simply identified columns as either Left or Right?

On Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 2:43 PM Geoff Jankowski via gnucash-user <
gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:

> 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
> >>>
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