21 October 2020
Rarely do we know the exact circumstances surrounding the coining of a new word. But in the case of googol, a mathematical term for the number represented by a one followed by 100 zeroes or 10100, we know exactly who coined it and when. It was coined by Milton Sirotta, the nine-year-old nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner. Kasner introduced his nephew’s coinage to the world in a 1938 article in the journal Scripta Mathematica:
You may want to know where I got the name "googol." I was walking in the woods with my nephew one day, and I asked the boy to think up any name for the number, any amusing name that entered his head. He suggested "googol." At the same time, he gave me a name for a still larger number: "googolplex." A googolplex is much larger than a googol, but it is still finite. Put down one, and then follow it by zeros until you get tired. No, that is a joke, because the googolplex is a specific number. A googolplex is one with so many zeros that the number of zeros is a googol: one with a googol of zeros. A googolplex is certainly bigger than a googol
To give a sense of the scale of the number, the total number of baryons (protons, neutrons, and electrons) in the universe is considerably less than a googol, approximately 3.28 × 1080.
The name of the Google search engine is an allusion to the huge number, implying that the engine handles a googol’s worth of data. The search engine was launched in 1998. The spelling was undoubtedly changed to make it a valid trademark.
The verb to Google appears shortly after the search engine’s launch. Google’s co-founder Larry Page posted the following to an e-mail list on 8 July 1998:
Have fun and keep googling!
The fact that it was Page who used the verb is a bit ironic, given that trademarks are supposed to be used only as adjectives (e.g., the Google search engine) and continued use of the term as a verb can lead to eventual loss of trademark protection, although I suppose Google has the money to fight this to the bitter end in court and this is not likely to be the fate of this particular trademark.
Sources:
Bennett, Jay. “How Many Particles Are in the Observable Universe?” Popular Mechanics, 11 July 2017.
Kasner, Edward. “New Names in Mathematics.” Scripta Mathematica, 5.1, January 1938, 13, HathiTrust Digital Library.
Kasner, Edward and James Newman. Mathematics and the Imagination. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940, 23. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. googol, n.
———, third edition, March 2006, s.v. Google, v.2.