Why are wine barrels abbreviated as bbl?

WINE TALK
1

Just curious how that came about.

2

No idea, but carburetors on cars are abbreviated the same way. Never understood why.

3

From Wikip:

“The “b” may have been doubled originally to indicate the plural (1 bl, 2 bbl), or possibly it was doubled to eliminate any confusion with bl as a symbol for the bale. Some sources claim that “bbl” originated as a symbol for “blue barrels” delivered by Standard Oil in its early days; this is probably incorrect because there are citations for the symbol at least as early as the late 1700s, long before Standard Oil was founded”

I think the first is probably right

4

It is the Saudi abbreviation.

5

I’ll bet a buck that before the next 24 hours goes by Cargassachi posts something about how it is an abbreviation for “BareBackLove”, and further explains how the round shape of barrels facilitates that very practice. Just a hunch. No guarantee that gophers play any role in any of it though.

6

I found this discussion on a non wine board:

Why Abbreviate "Barrel" as "BBL"? - The Firing Line Forums" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It doesn’t answer the question at all. A couple of people say that bbl is to differentiate a barrel from a bale, which is abbreviated bl. If that’s so, why not abbreviate barrel brl?

There’s also the blue barrel story, and like on berserkers, a couple people point out that the bbl abbreviation existed long before oil companies.

I read a few years ago that in old French barre barril was the word for barrel. I can’t find that on the internet at all today, but if that were true, bbl would be a good abbreviation for barre barril

7

I think it’s an example of using a Latin technique on a non-Latin word. Far as I know, making a plural wasn’t always consistent in Latin and depended on case, etc.

So early typesetters and who knows, writers too maybe, used the doubling.

For pages, the plural may have been paginae,

for manuscripts the plural might be manu scripta,

for beneficiary the plural might be beneficiarii,

whereas in English we’d just use an “s” or an “es”. I do like calling the Belgians the Belgae however.

Anyway we ended up with pp for pages, vv for verses, mms for manuscripts, cc for chapters, which all came from typesetting or printing. You also have bb ff for beneficiarii and I don’t know how to indicate Belgians although Monty Python came up with Bloody Fat Belgian Bastards, which would be BFBB.

Then I think people just went crazy with the doubling up to indicate a plural, maybe because Latin was thought to be such a perfect language and they figured if the Latins did it, why not us?

So you ended up with bbl for barrels and LLM for Master of Laws (which you get after you get your doctorate, or JD). I think it’s from Legum Magister - didn’t get one anyway.

I think they still use the doubling in Spanish and Italian too. Estados Unidos is EE UU.

In Italy doubles are used for superlatives - in music you have soft (piano) or p, really soft, or pp and loud (forte) or f and really loud or ff.

So my guess it it’s from Latin and transmogrified words it shouldn’t have.

There’s a website http://www.roman-britain.org/latin.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for Latin abbreviations.

I propose that the plural of Berzerkers be abbreviated as BBZ.

8

You’re so smart. flirtysmile
Although our Berserkers is with an S, so it would be BBS, which leads to many more translations. [wow.gif] [snort.gif]

9

I couldn’t find any confirmation of this. “Baril” is the French word for barrel, but usually in the context of oil or gunpowder (for wine we tend to use words like “barrique”). “Barre” means “bar” (the object). I checkedsome old French dictionaries but couldn’t find anything more, although I learned that “barre” was an old French word for “pied de vigne” (vine stock).

10

Correct for Spanish. [thumbs-up.gif]

11

It seems to me that modern adaptation is related to oil, while pre-oil era roots in plural form as gregt pointed out.

c. = chapter (L. caput)
cc. = chapters (L. capita)

v. = verse (L. versus [short second “u”])
vv. = verses (L. versus [long second “u”])

p. = page (L. pagina)
pp. = pages (L. paginae)

http://www.oil150.com/essays/2007/08/the-42-gallon-barrel-history" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The “bbl” Anecdotal information suggests that “bbl,” a strange abbreviation for barrel, relates to color. That information was gleaned from “Standard Oil Co.,” a book published in 1955 by oil historian Paul H. Giddens, a familiar visitor to the Oil Creek Valley. Giddens writes that large quantities of wooden barrels were needed on a constant basis to ship various refined petroleum products from refineries.

Kerosene, said Giddens, was shipped in blue painted barrels while gasoline was in red painted barrels. In the early oil industry, kerosene was the refined product of choice. That suggests “bbl” means “blue-barrel.”

12

Greg – You’ve topped yourself. Brilliant research!

I would add that mm or MM is often used for million_s_ in the plural.

And it makes sense in a funny way to double the B ahead of the L, since blb would not make a lot of sense and the L is simply there to distinguish these from bales.

13

He’s not smart, he’s just a lawyer who took on an honest profession late in life and remembers when lawyers use the abbrviation “pp” for pages in some citation formats.

14

I was told years ago by one of the previous enologists that “bbl” is the abbreviation of “Beer Barrel”.