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

[prl]

For what it's worth, both my oldish Macquarie Australian Dictionary and 
my even older Shorter Oxford agree that Dr is an abbreviation for 
debtor. Neither gives any etymology for the abbreviation and the Oxford 
doesn't give any historical reference for it. The online free Oxford 
dictionary https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dr gives it as a 
abbreviation for debit without any further information.

Peter


On 6/09/2018 00:58, David Cousens 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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