10,000, or 10^4, maen = enormous number.
10^8, oku = a compound of the words “man” and “mind.”
10^12, chio = indication, or symptom.
10^16, kei = capital city.
10^20, si = a term referring to grains.
10^24, owi = ——­
10^28, jio = extent of land.
10^32, ko = canal.
10^36, kan = some kind of a body of water.
10^40, sai = justice.
10^44, s[=a] = support.
10^48, kioku = limit, or more strictly, ultimate.
.01^2, rin = ——­
.01^3, mo = hair (of some animal).
.01^4, shi = thread.

In addition to these, some of the lower fractional values are described by words meaning “very small,” “very fine thread,” “sand grain,” “dust,” and “very vague.”  Taken altogether, the Japanese number system is the most remarkable I have ever examined, in the extent and variety of the higher numerals with well-defined descriptive names.  Most of the terms employed are such as to defy any attempt to trace the process of reasoning which led to their adoption.  It is not improbable that the choice was, in some of these cases at least, either accidental or arbitrary; but still, the changes in word meanings which occur with the lapse of time may have differentiated significations originally alike, until no trace of kinship would appear to the casual observer.  Our numerals “score” and “gross” are never thought of as having any original relation to what is conveyed by the other meanings which attach to these words.  But the origin of each, which is easily traced, shows that, in the beginning, there existed a well-defined reason for the selection of these, rather than other terms, for the numbers they now describe.  Possibly these remarkable Japanese terms may be accounted for in the same way, though the supposition is, for some reasons, quite improbable.  The same may be said for the Malagasy 1000, alina, which also means “night,” and the Hebrew 6, shesh, which has the additional signification “white marble,” and the stray exceptions which now and then come to the light in this or that language.  Such terms as these may admit of some logical explanation, but for the great mass of numerals whose primitive meanings can be traced at all, no explanation whatever is needed; the words are self-explanatory, as the examples already cited show.

A few additional examples of natural derivation may still further emphasize the point just discussed.  In Bambarese the word for 10, tank, is derived directly from adang, to count.[158] In the language of Mota, one of the islands of Melanesia, 100 is mel nol, used and done with, referring to the leaves of the cycas tree, with which the count had been carried on.[159] In many other Melanesian dialects[160] 100 is rau, a branch or leaf.  In the Torres Straits we find the same number expressed by na won, the close; and in Eromanga it is narolim narolim (2 x 5)(2 x 5).[161] This combination