0 in Japanese
零
Updated June 2026
0 in Japanese is 零, written れい in hiragana and read rei (also zero). Rei, zero, or maru: three ways to say nothing
NUMERAL
0
KANJI
零
HIRAGANA
れい
ROMAJI
rei
or zero
Cultural context
Japanese has three everyday words for zero. Rei (零) is the formal Sino-Japanese reading, used for temperatures (rei-do = 0 degrees), statistics, and written documents. Zero (ゼロ), borrowed from English and written in katakana, dominates in casual speech, sport, and countdowns. Maru (丸 / 〇, "circle") is used when reading a string of digits aloud, especially phone numbers and room numbers, because the written shape is a circle. Source: NHK Pronunciation Dictionary and Wikipedia "Japanese numerals".
Real sentence examples
今日の最低気温は零度でした (kyō no saitei kion wa rei-do deshita): today’s low was zero degrees.
試合は二対ゼロで終わりました (shiai wa ni-tai-zero de owarimashita): the match ended two to zero.
Pronunciation and morphology notes
Zero has no single default reading; the context picks the word. Use rei (零) in formal, scientific, and temperature contexts; zero (ゼロ) in casual speech and sport; maru (〇) when spelling a number out digit by digit, as in a phone number. The kanji 零 also means "to spill" or "a fraction" and is formal enough to serve as its own anti-forgery form, so it needs no separate daiji. In modern writing the Arabic 0 is by far the most common form.
Frequently asked questions
How do you write 0 in Japanese?
0 is written 零 in kanji and れい in hiragana. In romaji (modified Hepburn) it is rei, also read zero in some contexts.
What is 0 in hiragana?
0 in hiragana is れい. Hiragana spells out the reading rei phonetically; the kanji form is 零.
Related numbers
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