An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Hundert
Hundert, n., ‘hundred,’ from the equiv. MidHG. and late OHG. hundert, n.; comp. OSax. hunderod, AS. and E. hundred, and the equiv. OIc. hundrað, n.; Goth. *hundaraþ (gen. -dis) is wanting; the word is evidently a compound, the second part of which is connected with Goth. raþjan, ‘to count’ (comp. Rede). The first component was used alone for ‘hundred’; comp. Goth. twa hunda, 200, þrija hunda, 300, &c.; OHG. zwei hunt, driu hunt, &c., AS. tâ hund, þreo hund, 200, 300. This simple term is an Aryan form, Teut. hunda-, from pre-Teut. kmtó-; comp. Lat. centum, Gr. ἑκατόν, Sans. çatám, Zend sata, Lith. szimtas (m is changed in Teut. into n before d; see Rand); OSlov. sŭto is probably derived from Iran. sata. But while the word, judging from the correspondences in these language, denoted our decimal ‘hundred’ in primit. Aryan, we find that it is used in OTeut. for 120, the so-called duodecimal hundred. In OIc. hundraþ in the pre-Christian period denoted only 120, a distinction being made at a later period between tólfrœtt hundraþ, 120, and tírœtt hundraþ, 100; even at the present time hundraþ denotes the duodecimal hundred in Iceland. In Goth. we have only indirect evidence of the combination of the decimal and duodecimal numeration, taíhuntê-hund, ‘ten times ten,’ but twa hunda, 200 (OIc. tíu-tiger, ‘ten tens, 100’). So too in OHG. and AS.; comp. OHG. zëhanzo, ‘100,’ prop. ‘ten tens,’ and also einhunt, AS. teóntig, but tû hund. In other cases also the co-existence of the duodecimal and decimal system may be seen in OTeut. In G. the word for 120 became obsolete at an early period, but its existence may be inferred from the fact that the old word hund in OHG. and MidHG. was used only for several hundreds, while hundred was expressed almost entirely by zëhanzo and zëhenzig.