I=1, V=5, X=10, L=50, C=100, M=1000. Why? Outside of the fact “I” resembles our 1 a little, I can’t see any connection here. Plus I know the Roman alphabet was pretty similiar in location to the letters of our alphabet. And these values asigned to them obviously bear no relation to their position in the alphabet. Does anyone know how Roman letters got their values?
“I” represented one finger, for one. “V” represented an open hand, i.e. five fingers. Two "V"s make an “X” (although this origin is apparently only one of several theories).
“C” stands for centum (100), and “M” stands for mille (1,000).
I’m not sure about the “L”, “D” etc. Hmm, here’s a cite with some more info: http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/57547.html
You can think of the L (50) as the lower half of the C.
The M could be written as CIC, with the second C reversed. D is the second half of that, so D is roughly like half of M.
The numbers we use on a day-to-day basis are (modified) Arabic Numerals (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9), and were developed seperately from their Roman counterparts. However, I imagine the shape of their symbols for one have similar origins.