Why tennis counts 15, 30, 40 — and why zero is called «love»

Tennis counts fifteen, thirty, forty. And zero is called «love». Why?

The two explanations you have been told — the clock face and the French egg — are lovely, they are everywhere, and neither one is proven. What can be dated is something else, and that is where the real story is.

1435: the oldest reference

The scoring is medieval and French. The oldest documented reference is a ballad by Charles d'Orléans, from 1435, containing «quarante cinq»: forty-five.

So the original sequence was fifteen, thirty, forty-five. Over the years «forty-five» became «forty», quicker to say, and it stuck for good.

The clock theory, and its date problem

Here comes the pretty story: they say the scoring is a clock face. Each point, a quarter of an hour — fifteen, thirty, forty-five, sixty. It fits beautifully, which is why it gets repeated so often.

The problem is chronological. The minute hand does not become common until 1690: two hundred and fifty years after that ballad. It is hard to copy the face of a clock that was not yet marking minutes.

An honest caveat: clocks striking the quarters did exist, and the inspiration could have come from there. But that is a possibility, not a proof. The difference between those two things is what this whole article is about.

The scoring is documented in 1435. The minute hand becomes common in 1690. Two hundred and fifty years apart — and a good story does not close that gap.

«Love» and the French egg

The popular version says «love» comes from the French «l'œuf», the egg, shaped like a zero. It sounds perfect. It fails on one awkward detail: in French, the tennis zero is «zéro», not «l'œuf».

The best-supported explanation is English and far simpler. To play «for love» is to play for nothing, with no stakes. No points, nothing staked. That is the etymology recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary.

What can be stated, and what cannot

So tennis counts oddly out of medieval habit, and nobody has yet found the document explaining why those fifteens. The clock and the egg are good stories, and as stories they are fine: the mistake is telling them as facts.

Next time someone explains the clock to you, there is no need to argue. One date will do: 1690.