Timeline for Why aren't fields called "bodies" instead?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
23 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 23, 2015 at 14:58 | comment | added | Michael | I personally never liked the term "field" for algebraic structures, for it leads to expressions such as "vector fields over finite fields" etc.., | |
| Feb 3, 2014 at 14:16 | vote | accept | Dominik | ||
| Feb 3, 2014 at 14:02 | comment | added | quim | In European Spanish it is "cuerpo" indeed, but it is "campo" in Mexican Spanish, clearly by US influence. I don't know how far south in America this goes, nor whether they use "cuerpo" for skew fields. By the way, I believe that in Spain skew fields are generally called "anillos de división" (division rings) but "cuerpos no conmutativos" is not unheard of. | |
| Jan 23, 2014 at 20:57 | comment | added | Ben Webster♦ | In an additional complication, the word "champ" (field) in French also refers to the algebraic structure English speakers call a "stack." Worse and worse... | |
| Jan 23, 2014 at 16:49 | comment | added | Alain Valette | A remark on local versions of french: the Belgians use "champ" (= field) for "corps commutatif", while the Swiss say as the French... | |
| Jan 23, 2014 at 13:57 | comment | added | Gerald Edgar | Some British mathematical papers used the term corpus in the early days. | |
| Jan 23, 2014 at 13:54 | comment | added | Suvrit | Wow René, really, they use lichaam sounds like the German Leichnam (corpse)...but I thought skew fields are not dead :-) | |
| Jan 23, 2014 at 13:23 | answer | added | user9072 | timeline score: 18 | |
| Jan 23, 2014 at 12:35 | comment | added | Campello | Same in portuguese. We use "corpo" (same word as in italian). | |
| Jan 23, 2014 at 4:25 | answer | added | Bjørn Kjos-Hanssen | timeline score: 6 | |
| Jan 23, 2014 at 2:08 | comment | added | R.P. | Marco: in Flemish Dutch, the same happens: they use the word lichaam (body) for skew field and, as noted above, veld (field) for field. | |
| Jan 23, 2014 at 1:25 | answer | added | abz | timeline score: 14 | |
| Jan 22, 2014 at 23:37 | comment | added | Torsten Schoeneberg | See also mathoverflow.net/a/35289/27465 and darij grinberg's comment to the OP there. | |
| Jan 22, 2014 at 22:50 | comment | added | Marco Golla | @SashaAnan'in: the same happens in Italian, where the word for skew field is "corpo" (literally, "body"). Also, in French "corps" denotes a skew field. | |
| Jan 22, 2014 at 22:42 | comment | added | Dominik | @CarloBeenakker: That answer is indeed pretty interesting, but unfortunately, it doesn't provide an explanation why the German term hasn't simply been translated, as it has been the case with nearly every other mathematical term I'm aware of. | |
| Jan 22, 2014 at 22:38 | comment | added | Carlo Beenakker | I would think the user mixedmath has given a pretty complete answer at MSE --- math.stackexchange.com/questions/71129/… | |
| Jan 22, 2014 at 22:37 | comment | added | Vesselin Dimitrov | I don't know about the history, but for me the word "field" evokes the two-dimensional nature of the complex plane, and the word "ring" the visualization of $\mathbb{Z}[i]$ as the complex torus $\mathbb{C}/\mathbb{Z}[i]$. I have wondered whether anyone else has had similar associations. | |
| Jan 22, 2014 at 22:33 | comment | added | Sasha Anan'in | Curiously, in Russian, a commutative field sounds as field (поле), and a skew field sounds as body (тело). Sort of mixture. | |
| Jan 22, 2014 at 22:31 | comment | added | Dominik | @LennartMeier: And veld translates to field, so the Dutch use the "German" and the Dutch-speaking Belgians the "English" term. | |
| Jan 22, 2014 at 22:28 | comment | added | Bjørn Kjos-Hanssen | Danish uses "legeme" which is also "body". In Norwegian and Danish we have both "legeme" and "kropp" as synonyms, but Norwegians chose "kropp" and the Danes chose "legeme" as the translation of Körper. | |
| Jan 22, 2014 at 22:26 | comment | added | Sam Hopkins | math.stackexchange.com/questions/71129/…? | |
| Jan 22, 2014 at 22:25 | comment | added | Lennart Meier | I do not speak dutch, but wiktionary: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lichaam translates the everyday meaning of lichaam with body. | |
| Jan 22, 2014 at 22:20 | history | asked | Dominik | CC BY-SA 3.0 |