King Eighth

 King Eighth. I am a collector of almanacs and calendars. Mostly pocket-sized ones, but also in other varieties. Just an amateur; the vast majority come to me through local businesses that usually hand them out around the turn of the year. This year I managed to get one with a small detail. It was handed out by the Rey VIII supermarket. 

A Chinese supermarket, like so many others, and if you check Google Street View, it shows an image of its storefront with the sign bearing its name. Who knows the reason for their choice. At first, it occurred to me that there might be some relation between a well-known King VIII (Henry VIII of England) and the name, but it could also be anything else; Rey VIII might refer to any other king, not necessarily that one. Almanac photo The oddity in the almanac lies in how they wrote the VIII, backward, as IIIV, so it ended up as Rey IIIV. 

It looks like a joke, and clearly there's a mistake: the name of the supermarket on the almanac doesn't match the designation shown on the sign, which is the correct one, corroborated by another source. It remains to be known— something completely trivial—whether the order was placed as it appears written on the calendar (keep in mind that ancient Chinese writing was from right to left, but I understand this system changed and is currently from left to right) or if it was an error made by the print shop when producing it. As an added note, there is an aircraft model, the Dassault Mirage IIIV (pronounced "three-vee"). 

The origin of this numbering system is found in ancient shepherds, in the culture of tally marks. Over time, the Romans applied the subtractive principle to shorten certain numbers. The digit I placed to the left of the V subtracts one unit, and the digit I placed to the right of the V adds one unit to it. 

It is believed that at certain historical moments, including part of the Middle Ages, numbering as well as ordering were capricious, depending on the author's decision, with no parameters to guide them. In various studies on archaeological remains of rocks and other elements engraved in ancient times in what was the region of Hispania, several combinations have been found—sometimes impossible ones, such as the number IIIV.